Pupillary response is associated with the reset and switching of functional brain networks during salience processing

Abstract

The interface between processing internal goals and salient events in the environment involves various top-down processes. Previous studies have identified multiple brain areas for salience processing, including the salience network (SN), dorsal attention network, and the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) system. However, interactions among these systems in salience processing remain unclear. Here, we simultaneously recorded pupillometry, EEG, and fMRI during an auditory oddball paradigm. The analyses of EEG and fMRI data uncovered spatiotemporally organized target-associated neural correlates. By modeling the target-modulated effective connectivity, we found that the target-evoked pupillary response is associated with the network directional couplings from late to early subsystems in the trial, as well as the network switching initiated by the SN. These findings indicate that the SN might cooperate with the pupil-indexed LC-NE system in the reset and switching of cortical networks, and shed light on their implications in various cognitive processes and neurological diseases.

The neural basis of the insight memory advantage.

“…NE not only impacts the amygdala but also exerts widespread effects on various brain regions, heightening overall arousal and alertness [45], [55]. For example, the LC-NE system modulates attention and the activity of the salience network [56], [57]. The salience network, comprising bilateral anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), detects and prioritizes salient environmental information, enhancing the encoding of relevant information while filtering out irrelevant stimuli [58], [59], [60].…”

Test-retest reliability and behavioural correlates of pupil responses in an n-back task

“…Aston-Jones & Cohen, 2005;Hopstaken et al, 2015a) or behavioral strategies (i.e. shifting between exploitation and exploration (Jepma & Niewenhuis, 2011;Pajkossy et al, 2017;2018;He et al, 2023) Specifically, small baseline pupil diameter reflecting low tonic LC firing rate is associated with low engagement and poor task performance, whereas a large baseline pupil size mirroring high LC firing rate is observable when participants are distractable or they are exploring the environment without a clear behavioral goal (see e.g. Konishi et al, 2017;Unsworth & Robison, 2018b;Shirama et al, 2020).…”

Mapping the bioimaging marker of Alzheimer’s disease based on pupillary light response-driven brain-wide fMRI in awake mice

“…Combining whole-brain fMRI with real-time pupillometry provides a non-invasive mapping scheme to identify pupil-fMRI relationships across different species. Existing human fMRI studies with pupillometry have revealed pupil dynamic changes associated with the activation of subcortical brain nuclei along the ascending arousal network, as well as the salience network including the cingulate cortex and insula 32,[41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49] . Interestingly, opposite arousal correlation features between eye movements and resting-state fMRI have been revealed between the cortex and subcortical nuclei in both non-human primates and rodent brains [50][51][52] .…”