Pupil dilation indexes automatic and dynamic inference about the precision of stimulus distributions

Silvestrin, Francesco; Penny, Will D.; FitzGerald, Thomas H. B.

doi:10.1016/j.jmp.2021.102503

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…A dissimilarity between our study and the majority of previous auditory studies is the specific choice of stimuli, as previous studies predominantly used tones 1 , 19 , 20 , 32 , 33 , whereas we used vowels spoken by different speakers. However, some studies have successfully used verbal auditory stimuli to investigate statistical learning based on transition probabilities in sequences 34 , especially in the field of language acquisition 35 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Pupil diameter as an indicator of sound pair familiarity after statistically structured auditory sequence

Becker,

Korn,

Blank

2024

Sci Rep

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Inspired by recent findings in the visual domain, we investigated whether the stimulus-evoked pupil dilation reflects temporal statistical regularities in sequences of auditory stimuli. We conducted two preregistered pupillometry experiments (experiment 1, n = 30, 21 females; experiment 2, n = 31, 22 females). In both experiments, human participants listened to sequences of spoken vowels in two conditions. In the first condition, the stimuli were presented in a random order and, in the second condition, the same stimuli were presented in a sequence structured in pairs. The second experiment replicated the first experiment with a modified timing and number of stimuli presented and without participants being informed about any sequence structure. The sound-evoked pupil dilation during a subsequent familiarity task indicated that participants learned the auditory vowel pairs of the structured condition. However, pupil diameter during the structured sequence did not differ according to the statistical regularity of the pair structure. This contrasts with similar visual studies, emphasizing the susceptibility of pupil effects during statistically structured sequences to experimental design settings in the auditory domain. In sum, our findings suggest that pupil diameter may serve as an indicator of sound pair familiarity but does not invariably respond to task-irrelevant transition probabilities of auditory sequences.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Pupil diameter as an indicator of sound pair familiarity after statistically structured auditory sequence

Becker,

Korn,

Blank

2024

Sci Rep

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“…With regard to the underlying neurotransmitters, pupil dilation has often been interpreted as reflecting global arousal, as linked to the locus coeruleus‐norepinephrine (LC‐NE) system (Krishnamurthy et al, 2017; Murphy et al, 2011; Nassar et al, 2012; Urai et al, 2017; Vincent et al, 2019), and surprise‐driven stimulus responses (Raisig et al, 2010; Preuschoff et al, 2011; Nassar et al, 2012; Lavin et al, 2014; Kloosterman et al, 2015; de Berker et al, 2016; Damsma & van Rijn, 2017; Quirins et al, 2018; Alamia et al, 2019; Richter & de Lange, 2019; Silvestrin et al, 2021). But in addition to the LC‐NE system, there are more brain circuits related to the mediation of pupil size which involve, for example, the superior colliculus, and the basal forebrain (Joshi & Gold, 2020; Wang & Munoz, 2015), so for this study, we cannot determine which neural pathways or neurotransmitters drive the observed stimulus‐evoked pupil dilation response.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous pupillometry studies induced expectations by explicitly informing their participants about stimulus distributions (de Berker et al, 2016; Friedman et al, 1973; Qiyuan et al, 1985), by sampling from a Gaussian distribution (Krishnamurthy et al, 2017; Silvestrin et al, 2021), or by creating transition regularities in a stimulus sequence (Alamia et al, 2019). While we informed participants that there are different conditional probabilities of each vowel related to each face, we did not inform them about the specific pairings which the participants had to learn.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous pupillometry studies also showed that an unexpected stimulus, as defined by a low probability, is associated with a larger pupil diameter than expected (or more likely) stimuli (Alamia et al, 2019;de Berker et al, 2016;Kloosterman et al, 2015;Lavin et al, 2014;Nassar et al, 2012;Preuschoff et al, 2011;Reinhard & Lachnit, 2002). Larger pupil dilation in response to unexpected events compared to expected events was also demonstrated in the auditory domain (Damsma & van Rijn, 2017;Friedman et al, 1973;Qiyuan et al, 1985;Silvestrin et al, 2021). The negative scaling of pupil diameter with stimulus probability is often interpreted as signalling surprise (Alamia et al, 2019;Preuschoff et al, 2011;Qiyuan et al, 1985).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

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The pupil dilation response as an indicator of visual cue uncertainty and auditory outcome surprise

Becker,

Viertler,

Korn

et al. 2024

Eur J of Neuroscience

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In everyday perception, we combine incoming sensory information with prior expectations. Expectations can be induced by cues that indicate the probability of following sensory events. The information provided by cues may differ and hence lead to different levels of uncertainty about which event will follow. In this experiment, we employed pupillometry to investigate whether the pupil dilation response to visual cues varies depending on the level of cue‐associated uncertainty about a following auditory outcome. Also, we tested whether the pupil dilation response reflects the amount of surprise about the subsequently presented auditory stimulus. In each trial, participants were presented with a visual cue (face image) which was followed by an auditory outcome (spoken vowel). After the face cue, participants had to indicate by keypress which of three auditory vowels they expected to hear next. We manipulated the cue‐associated uncertainty by varying the probabilistic cue‐outcome contingencies: One face was most likely followed by one specific vowel (low cue uncertainty), another face was equally likely followed by either of two vowels (intermediate cue uncertainty) and the third face was followed by all three vowels (high cue uncertainty). Our results suggest that pupil dilation in response to task‐relevant cues depends on the associated uncertainty, but only for large differences in the cue‐associated uncertainty. Additionally, in response to the auditory outcomes, the pupil dilation scaled negatively with the cue‐dependent probabilities, likely signalling the amount of surprise.

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“…There is a growing body of work investigating inference and learning as Bayesian model inversion in humans (FitzGerald, Hämmerer, Friston, Li, & Dolan, 2017;Mathys, Daunizeau, Friston, & Stephan, 2011;Silvestrin, Penny, & FitzGerald, 2021;De Berker et al, 2016;Diaconescu et al, 2017). However, in all this work strong assumptions are made about the generative model.…”

Section: Structure Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of retrospective inference on structure learning: a simulation study

Silvestrin¹,

Penny²,

FitzGerald³

2022

Preprint

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The ability to flexibly learn the structure of one’s surroundings (structure learning) is crucial foradaptive behaviour. Use of an inaccurate model of the environment can lead to incorrect inferences,and thus maladaptive actions. Despite this, relatively little is understood about how structure learningoccurs in human cognition. As a first step towards addressing this, we built on existing approaches tocreate an online clustering algorithm, in which we included a working memory component, allowingbelief update about past stimuli (retrospective inference) in contrast with the more widespread fullyonline approach. We used this model to simulate behaviour on a novel structure learning task, whereoptimal performance required estimating the number and properties of discrete clusters of continuousstimuli. In this work we show how our algorithm outperforms a parametric one (i.e. with fixednumber of clusters). We further demonstrate how retrospective inference benefits structure learning,with performance increasing with working memory capacity. We finally discuss trial-by trial measuresthat can be derived from our model, which provide testable predictions for future empirical studies.

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Pupil dilation indexes automatic and dynamic inference about the precision of stimulus distributions

Cited by 4 publications

References 76 publications

Pupil diameter as an indicator of sound pair familiarity after statistically structured auditory sequence

Pupil diameter as an indicator of sound pair familiarity after statistically structured auditory sequence

The pupil dilation response as an indicator of visual cue uncertainty and auditory outcome surprise

Effects of retrospective inference on structure learning: a simulation study

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