Pupil-Linked Arousal Responds to Unconscious Surprisal

Andrea Alamia (1, 2) , Rufin Vanrullen (1) , Emanuele Pasqualotto (2) , André Mouraux (2) , Alexandre Zénon (2, 3)

1 CERCO UMR5549 - Centre de recherche cerveau et cognition
2 Institute of Neuroscience [Bruxelles]
3 INCIA - Institut de Neurosciences cognitives et intégratives d'Aquitaine

Pupil size under constant illumination reflects brain arousal state, and dilates in response to novel information, or surprisal. Whether this response can be observed regardless of conscious perception is still unknown. In the present study, male and female adult humans performed an implicit learning task across a series of three experiments. We measured pupil and brain-evoked potentials to stimuli that violated transition statistics but were not relevant to the task. We found that pupil size dilated following these surprising events, in the absence of awareness of transition statistics, and only when attention was allocated to the stimulus. These pupil responses correlated with central potentials, evoking an anterior cingulate origin. Arousal response to surprisal outside the scope of conscious perception points to the fundamental relationship between arousal and information processing and indicates that pupil size can be used to track the progression of implicit learning.

Mots clés: arousal; ERPs; implicit learning; prediction error; pupil size; statistical learning

Domaines: Neurosciences

Andrea Alamia, Rufin Vanrullen, Emanuele Pasqualotto, André Mouraux, Alexandre Zénon. Pupil-Linked Arousal Responds to Unconscious Surprisal. Journal of Neuroscience, 2019, 39 (27), pp.5369-5376. ⟨10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3010-18.2019⟩. ⟨hal-03093426⟩