Separable pupillary signatures of perception and action during perceptual multistability

  1. Jan Brascamp  Is a corresponding author
  2. Gilles De Hollander
  3. Michael D Wertheimer
  4. Ashley N DePew
  5. Tomas Knapen
  1. Michigan State University, United States
  2. University of Zurich, Switzerland
  3. Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging, Netherlands

Abstract

The pupil provides a rich, non-invasive measure of the neural bases of perception and cognition, and has been of particular value in uncovering the role of arousal-linked neuromodulation, which alters both cortical processing and pupil size. But pupil size is subject to a multitude of influences, which complicates unique interpretation. We measured pupils of observers experiencing perceptual multistability -- an ever-changing subjective percept in the face of unchanging but inconclusive sensory input. In separate conditions the endogenously generated perceptual changes were either task-relevant or not, allowing a separation between perception-related and task-related pupil signals. Perceptual changes were marked by a complex pupil response that could be decomposed into two components: a dilation tied to task execution and plausibly indicative of an arousal-linked noradrenaline surge, and an overlapping constriction tied to the perceptual transient and plausibly a marker of altered visual cortical representation. Constriction, but not dilation, amplitude systematically depended on the time interval between perceptual changes, possibly providing an overt index of neural adaptation. These results show that the pupil provides a simultaneous reading on interacting but dissociable neural processes during perceptual multistability, and suggest that arousal-linked neuromodulator release shapes action but not perception in these circumstances.

Data availability

The raw data associated with this study are available from datadryad.org (https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.41ns1rncp)Analysis code associated with this study is available from GitHub (https://github.com/janbrascamp/Pupils_during_binocular_rivalry)

The following data sets were generated

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Jan Brascamp

    Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, United States
    For correspondence
    brascamp@msu.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-7955-5479
  2. Gilles De Hollander

    Zurich Center for Neuroeconomics, Department of Economics, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-1988-5091
  3. Michael D Wertheimer

    Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Ashley N DePew

    Psychology, Michigan State University, Davis, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-8398-7319
  5. Tomas Knapen

    University of Amsterdam, Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging, Amsterdam, Netherlands
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-5863-8689

Funding

No external funding was received for this work.

Ethics

Human subjects: Informed consent, and consent to publish, was obtained, and all research was approved by Michigan State University IRB, and executed in accordance with the Michigan State University IRB guidelines. The MSU IRB protocol number associated with this work is IRB# 17-996.

Copyright

© 2021, Brascamp et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Jan Brascamp
  2. Gilles De Hollander
  3. Michael D Wertheimer
  4. Ashley N DePew
  5. Tomas Knapen
(2021)
Separable pupillary signatures of perception and action during perceptual multistability
eLife 10:e66161.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.66161

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.66161

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