Mice regulate their attentional intensity and arousal to exploit increases in task utility

Abstract

To meet their survival needs, organisms must continuously select which sensory stimuli to attend to and decide how much attention to pay. Attention’s selective aspect has been a cornerstone of behavioral and physiological study, whereas attentional intensity is poorly understood. Autonomic arousal is thought to strongly influence attentional intensity, but evidence is lacking, including regarding if and how organisms self-regulate their arousal to match attentional intensity to its utility. Here, we developed an auditory attentional intensity task for head-fixed mice and vary task utility by changing reward size. We record pupil size and walking speed as proxies of arousal and exploration, respectively. Using simple performance metrics and sequential sampling modeling, we find that mice increase their attentional intensity during periods of high task utility. The utility-related attentional boost is partially mediated by stabilization of pupil-linked arousal around an optimal mid-sized level, and an associated reduction in exploratory behavior. In sum, self-regulation of arousal partially implements strategic attentional intensity allocation.