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Task-evoked pupil responses reflect internal belief states

View ORCID ProfileO. Colizoli, View ORCID ProfileJ.W. de Gee, View ORCID ProfileA.E. Urai, View ORCID ProfileT.H. Donner
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/275776
O. Colizoli
1Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
2Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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J.W. de Gee
1Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
2Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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A.E. Urai
1Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
2Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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T.H. Donner
1Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
2Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
3Amsterdam Brain & Cognition, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Abstract

Perceptual decisions about the state of the environment are often made in the face of uncertain evidence. Internal uncertainty signals are considered important regulators of learning and decision-making. A growing body of work has implicated the brain’s arousal systems in uncertainty signaling. Here, we found that two specific computational variables, postulated by recent theoretical work, evoke boosts of arousal at different times during a perceptual decision: decision confidence (the observer’s internally estimated probability that a choice was correct given the evidence) before feedback, and prediction errors (deviations from expected reward) after feedback. We monitored pupil diameter, a peripheral marker of central arousal state, while subjects performed a challenging perceptual choice task with a delayed monetary reward. We quantified evoked pupil responses during decision formation and after reward-linked feedback. During both intervals, decision difficulty and accuracy had interacting effects on pupil responses. Pupil responses negatively scaled with decision confidence prior to feedback and scaled with uncertainty-dependent prediction errors after feedback. This pattern of pupil responses during both intervals was in line with a model using the observer’s graded belief about choice accuracy to anticipate rewards and compute prediction errors. We conclude that pupil-linked arousal systems are modulated by internal belief states.

Footnotes

  • ↵* Tobias H. Donner, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, N43, Martinistraße 52, 20246 Hamburg, t.donner{at}uke.de

Copyright 
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 July 24, 2018.
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Task-evoked pupil responses reflect internal belief states
O. Colizoli, J.W. de Gee, A.E. Urai, T.H. Donner
bioRxiv 275776; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/275776
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Task-evoked pupil responses reflect internal belief states
O. Colizoli, J.W. de Gee, A.E. Urai, T.H. Donner
bioRxiv 275776; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/275776

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