Pupillary response is associated with the reset and switching of functional brain networks during salience processing

Abstract

The interface between processing internal goals and salient events in the environment involves various top-down processes. Previous studies have identified multiple brain areas for salience processing, including the salience network (SN), dorsal attention network, and the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) system. However, interactions among these systems in salience processing remain unclear. Here, we simultaneously recorded pupillometry, EEG, and fMRI during an auditory oddball paradigm. The analyses of EEG and fMRI data uncovered spatiotemporally organized target-associated neural correlates. By modeling the target-modulated effective connectivity, we found that the target-evoked pupillary response is associated with the network directional couplings from late to early subsystems in the trial, as well as the network switching initiated by the SN. These findings indicate that the SN might cooperate with the pupil-indexed LC-NE system in the reset and switching of cortical networks, and shed light on their implications in various cognitive processes and neurological diseases.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
May 12, 2023
Source ID
10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011081

Entities

People

  • Hengda He
  • Linbi Hong
  • Paul Sajda

Organizations

  • Air Force Office of Scientific Research
  • United States Department of Defense

Tags

Readers

  • Brain and Cognitive Science; Experimental Psychology; Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Neural Network Machine Learning.
  • Neuroscience