Why do some prefrontal neurons hold steady while others rapidly switch what they represent? Neuroscientist Encarni Marcos reveals that the prefrontal cortex operates through a continuum of neural stability and flexibility , where heterogeneous populations simultaneously maintain goals in memory and dynamically transform them into actions. Subscribe for more from the Convergent Science Network podcast series. Encarni Marcos joins Paul Verschure and Tony Prescott to discuss her research on how prefrontal cortex supports goal-directed behavior. Recording from dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in monkeys performing discrimination tasks, she finds that neurons do not simply encode one feature of a task. Instead, individual neurons represent multiple features, goals, cues, actions, often overlapping in time, with some neurons switching their representatio ...