Pupil fluctuations track rapid changes in adrenergic and cholinergic activity in cortex
By Jacob Reimer, Matthew McGinley, Yang Liu, Charles Rodenkirch, Qi Wang, David A. McCormick, Andreas S. Tolias. Nature Communications, 2016
848 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Rapid variations in cortical state during wakefulness have a strong influence on neural and behavioural responses and are tightly coupled to changes in pupil size across species. However, the physiological processes linking cortical state and pupil variations are largely unknown. Here we demonstrate that these rapid variations, during both quiet waking and locomotion, are highly correlated with fluctuations in the activity of corticopetal noradrenergic and cholinergic projections. Rapid dilations of the pupil are tightly associated with phasic activity in noradrenergic axons, whereas longer-lasting dilations of the pupil, such as during locomotion, are accompanied by sustained activity in cholinergic axons. Thus, the pupil can be used to sensitively track the activity in multiple neuromodulatory transmitter systems as they control the state of the waking brain. In addition to light intensity, changes in pupil diameter are correlated with mental effort, attention and levels of arousal. Reimer et al. report that across behavioural states, fluctuations in pupil diameter are highly correlated with activity of noradrenergic and cholinergic projection neurons.
Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4c034942d290bba00f611f5cc8006d02ad8e373f
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Cognitive Neuroscience
Citations in the corpus
- Pupillometry: Psychology, Physiology, and Function (2018, background): “They also observed that spontaneous pupil-size fluctuations were correlated with activity in noradrenergic projections to the cortex (Reimer et al., 2016), suggesting that the locus coroeleus (LC), an important source of noradrenergic input to the cortex (Aston-Jones & Cohen, 2005), may be driving p”
- Pupil dilation as an index of effort in cognitive control tasks: A review (2018, background): “Interestingly, a recent study has shown that activity in both norepinephrine and acetylcholine axons are reflected by pupil dilation, although they differ in temporal dynamics (Reimer et al., 2016).”