Strategic Stabilization of Arousal Boosts Sustained Attention

Authors

Jan Willem de Gee
Zakir Mridha
Marisa Hudson
Yanchen Shi
Hannah Ramsaywak
Spencer Smith
Nishad Karediya
Matthew Thompson
Kit Jaspe
Hong Jiang
Wenhao Zhang
Matthew J McGinley

Language

English

Publication Date

9-23-2024

Journal

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2024.07.070

PMID

39151432

PMCID

PMC11447271

PubMedCentral® Posted Date

9-23-2025

PubMedCentral® Full Text Version

Author MSS

Abstract

Arousal and motivation interact to profoundly influence behavior. For example, experience tells us that we have some capacity to control our arousal when appropriately motivated, such as staying awake while driving a motor vehicle. However, little is known about how arousal and motivation jointly influence decision computations, including if and how animals, such as rodents, adapt their arousal state to their needs. Here, we developed and show results from an auditory, feature-based, sustained-attention task with intermittently shifting task utility. We use pupil size to estimate arousal across a wide range of states and apply tailored signal detection theoretic, hazard function and accumulation-to-bound modeling approaches in a large cohort of mice. We find that pupil-linked arousal and task utility both have major impacts on multiple aspects of task performance. Although substantial arousal fluctuations persist across utility conditions, mice partially stabilize their arousal near an intermediate, and optimal, level when task utility is high. Behavioral analyses show that multiple elements of behavior 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 the quantity of evidence accumulated per time step, while attending. In sum, the results establish specific decision-computational signatures of arousal, motivation, and their interaction, in attention. So doing, we provide an experimental and analysis framework for studying arousal self-regulation in neurotypical brains and in diseases such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Keywords

Animals, Arousal, Attention, Mice, Male, Motivation, Pupil, Mice, Inbred C57BL, Female, Decision Making

Published Open-Access

yes

Recommended Citation

de Gee, Jan Willem; Mridha, Zakir; Hudson, Marisa; et al., "Strategic Stabilization of Arousal Boosts Sustained Attention" (2024). Duncan NRI Faculty and Staff Publications. 164.
https://digitalcommons.library.tmc.edu/duncar_nri_pub/164