Strategic self-control of arousal boosts sustained attention

Abstract

Spontaneous fluctuations in arousal influence neural and behavioral responses to sensory stimuli. However, it is not known if and how animals regulate their arousal to respond to fluctuating behavioral demands. Here, we show results from mice performing an auditory feature-based sustained attention task with intermittently shifting task utility. We use pupil size to infer arousal across a wide range of states in a large behavioral cohort. We find that mice stabilize their arousal state near an intermediate and optimal level when task utility is high. In contrast, during epochs of low task utility they sample a broader and suboptimal range of arousal states. Using diffusion modeling, we further show that multiple computational elements of attention-based decisionmaking improve during high task utility and that arousal influences some, but not all, of them. Specifically, arousal influences the likelihood and timescale of sensory evidence accumulation, but not its quality. In sum, the results establish a specific attentional signature of adaptively self-regulated arousal and provide an experimental framework for understanding arousal self-regulation in brain disorders such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.