Neural signatures of motor memories emerge in neural network models

Animals can learn and seamlessly perform a great number of behaviors. However, it is unclear how neural activity can accommodate new behaviors without interfering with those an animal has already acquired. Recent studies in monkeys performing motor and brain-computer interface (BCI) learning tasks have identified neural signatures—so-called “memory traces” and “uniform shifts”—that appear in the neural activity of a familiar task after learning a new task. Here we asked when these signatures arise and how they are related to continual learning. By modeling a BCI learning paradigm, we show that both signatures emerge naturally as a consequence of learning, without requiring a specific mechanism. In general, memory traces and uniform shifts reflected savings by capturing how information from different tasks coexisted in the same neural activity patterns. Yet, although the properties of these two different signatures were both indicative of savings, they were uncorrelated with each other. When we added contextual inputs that separated the activity for the different tasks, these signatures decreased even when savings were maintained, demonstrating the challenges of defining a clear relationship between neural activity changes and continual learning.