Pupil-linked arousal is driven by decision uncertainty and alters serial choice bias

Anne E. Urai (), Anke Braun and Tobias H. Donner ()
Additional contact information
Anne E. Urai: University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf
Anke Braun: University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf
Tobias H. Donner: University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf

Nature Communications, 2017, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract While judging their sensory environments, decision-makers seem to use the uncertainty about their choices to guide adjustments of their subsequent behaviour. One possible source of these behavioural adjustments is arousal: decision uncertainty might drive the brain’s arousal systems, which control global brain state and might thereby shape subsequent decision-making. Here, we measure pupil diameter, a proxy for central arousal state, in human observers performing a perceptual choice task of varying difficulty. Pupil dilation, after choice but before external feedback, reflects three hallmark signatures of decision uncertainty derived from a computational model. This increase in pupil-linked arousal boosts observers’ tendency to alternate their choice on the subsequent trial. We conclude that decision uncertainty drives rapid changes in pupil-linked arousal state, which shape the serial correlation structure of ongoing choice behaviour.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14637 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:8:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms14637

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms14637

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().