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Changes in pupil diameter entrained by cortically initiated changes in attention

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2012

LORI B. DANIELS ,
DAVID F. NICHOLS ,
MATHEW S. SEIFERT  and
HOWARD S. HOCK
LORI B. DANIELS
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida
DAVID F. NICHOLS
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Roanoke College, Salem, Virginia
MATHEW S. SEIFERT
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida
HOWARD S. HOCK*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida
*
*Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Howard S. Hock, Department of Psychology, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, 33431. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The diameter of the pupil is affected by changes in ambient illumination, color, spatial structure, movement, and mental effort. It has now been found that pupil diameter can be affected by cognitive processes. That is, it can be entrained by alternations between broadly spread and narrowly focused attention that are cued exogenously (attention is “summoned” by the cue) or endogenously (attention changes under the perceiver’s intentional control). Pupil diameter also is affected by post-eye-blink constrictions that occur most often when attention is narrowed, and possibly by changes evoked by the near reflex, although changes in attention state parsimoniously account for the entirety of the results. Changes in pupil diameter produce differences in spherical aberration that alternately blur (when the pupil dilates) and sharpen the retinal image (when the pupil constricts), affecting the relative sensitivity of large receptive fields that mediate broadly spread attention compared with smaller receptive fields that mediate more narrowly focused attention. Results for endogenously cued, intentional changes in attentional spread provide definitive behavioral evidence for cortical feedback to subcortical nuclei that control pupil diameter, either directly or through pupil-constricting eye blinks. Analyses of convergent and divergent changes in eye position indicate that the near reflex was activated long after the initiation of relatively gradual attentionally cued changes in pupil diameter, and further, that when it occurs, the near reflex facilitates ongoing changes in pupil diameter.

Keywords

Pupil dynamicsAttentional spreadCortical feedbackSpherical aberration
Type
Research Articles
Information
Visual Neuroscience , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , March 2012 , pp. 131 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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