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Reading Memory Formation from the Eyes

Anne Bergt, View ORCID ProfileAnne E. Urai, View ORCID ProfileTobias H. Donner, Lars Schwabe
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/268490
Anne Bergt
Department of Cognitive Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of Hamburg, Germany
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Anne E. Urai
Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, GermanyDepartment of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Tobias H. Donner
Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, GermanyDepartment of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Lars Schwabe
Department of Cognitive Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of Hamburg, Germany
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Abstract

At any time, we are processing thousands of stimuli, but only few of them will be remembered hours or days later. Is there any way to predict which ones? Here, we show that the pupil response to ongoing stimuli, an indicator of physiological arousal, is a reliable predictor of long-term memory for these stimuli, over at least one day. Pupil dilation was tracked while participants performed visual and auditory encoding tasks. Memory was tested immediately after encoding and 24 hours later. Irrespective of the encoding modality, trial-by-trial variations in pupil dilation predicted which stimuli were recalled in the immediate and 24 hours-delayed tests. These results show that our eyes may provide a window into the formation of long-term memories. Furthermore, our findings underline the important role of central arousal systems in the rapid formation of memories in the brain, possibly by gating synaptic plasticity mechanisms.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
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Posted February 20, 2018.
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Reading Memory Formation from the Eyes
Anne Bergt, Anne E. Urai, Tobias H. Donner, Lars Schwabe
bioRxiv 268490; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/268490
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Reading Memory Formation from the Eyes
Anne Bergt, Anne E. Urai, Tobias H. Donner, Lars Schwabe
bioRxiv 268490; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/268490

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