Journal
NATURE NEUROSCIENCE
Volume 15, Issue 7, Pages 1040-1046Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/nn.3130
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Funding
- US National Institutes of Health [R01 EY015260, F31 MH093099, T90 DA22763]
- McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience
- Burroughs-Wellcome Fund
- Sloan Foundation
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The ability to make inferences about the current state of a dynamic process requires ongoing assessments of the stability and reliability of data generated by that process. We found that these assessments, as defined by a normative model, were reflected in nonluminance-mediated changes in pupil diameter of human subjects performing a predictive-inference task. Brief changes in pupil diameter reflected assessed instabilities in a process that generated noisy data. Baseline pupil diameter reflected the reliability with which recent data indicate the current state of the data-generating process and individual differences in expectations about the rate of instabilities. Together these pupil metrics predicted the influence of new data on subsequent inferences. Moreover, a task- and luminance-independent manipulation of pupil diameter predictably altered the influence of new data. Thus, pupil-linked arousal systems can help to regulate the influence of incoming data on existing beliefs in a dynamic environment.
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