Dynamics of oscillatory power support the integration of perceptual and mnemonic information within the premotor cortex

Flexible behavior requires decision-making that integrates both perceptual and mnemonic-related information. While the dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) is known to support perceptual decision-making, its contributions to decisions based on mnemonic information for motor planning remain underexplored. Here, we investigate local field potential (LFP) oscillations in the PMd of monkeys performing a transitive inference task requiring the formation and retrieval of mnemonic representations of an arbitrarily defined rank order among perceptual items. The difficulty of this operation depends on the distance of the items in the mnemonic representation. We tested the hypothesis that this symbolic distance (SD) systematically modulates PMd oscillatory activity in a frequency-specific manner during decisions that combine perceptual identification with mnemonic retrieval. Consistent with this hypothesis, PMd exhibited local and reliable SD-dependent changes across low (Theta, Alpha, Beta) and high-Gamma (h-Gamma) frequency bands, and related to behavioral performance. These findings provide evidence that the PMd integrates perceptual and mnemonic information through coordinated modulations of oscillatory activity, extending its role beyond perceptual mapping to support abstract, memory-guided decisions. The brain’s contribution to abstract decision-making is largely unknown. Here, the authors show that the premotor cortex neural dynamics support the linking of perceptual stimuli to rank-ordered structures, managing abstract information to form motor plans.