Spectral signature and behavioral consequence of spontaneous shifts of pupil-linked arousal in human

  1. Ella Podvalny
  2. Leana E King
  3. Biyu J He  Is a corresponding author
  1. New York University School of Medicine, United States

Abstract

Arousal levels perpetually rise and fall spontaneously. How markers of arousal - pupil size and frequency content of brain activity - relate to each other and influence behavior in humans is poorly understood. We simultaneously monitored magnetoencephalography and pupil in healthy volunteers at rest and during a visual perceptual decision-making task. Spontaneously varying pupil size correlates with power of brain activity in most frequency bands across large-scale resting-state cortical networks. Pupil size recorded at prestimulus baseline correlates with subsequent shifts in detection bias (c) and sensitivity (d'). When dissociated from pupil-linked state, prestimulus spectral power of resting state networks still predicts perceptual behavior. Fast spontaneous pupil constriction and dilation correlate with large-scale brain activity as well but not perceptual behavior. Our results illuminate the relation between central and peripheral arousal markers and their respective roles in human perceptual decision-making.

Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files. Source data are available as csv files for all figures except for whole brain images.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Ella Podvalny

    Neurobiology, New York University School of Medicine, New York, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Leana E King

    Neuroscience Institute, New York University School of Medicine, New York, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Biyu J He

    Neuroscience Institute, New York University School of Medicine, New York, United States
    For correspondence
    biyu.jade.he@gmail.com
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-1549-1351

Funding

National Science Foundation (BCS- 1753218)

  • Biyu J He

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: All participants provided written informed consent. The experiment was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (protocol #14-N-0002).

Reviewing Editor

  1. Jonas Obleser, University of Lübeck, Germany

Publication history

  1. Received: March 10, 2021
  2. Accepted: August 27, 2021
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: August 31, 2021 (version 1)
  4. Version of Record published: October 1, 2021 (version 2)

Copyright

© 2021, Podvalny 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. Ella Podvalny
  2. Leana E King
  3. Biyu J He
(2021)
Spectral signature and behavioral consequence of spontaneous shifts of pupil-linked arousal in human
eLife 10:e68265.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.68265

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