Pupillary response like physiological marker in the decisions making

Key words: Pupil diameter, decision making, Stroop.

Behavioral neuroscience usually has dealt with autonomic arousal in terms of struggle for survival or intense emotion. However, many recent studies have indicated that cognitive efforts are associated with autonomic arousal. Thus, this activation could be necessary to perform some cognitive task and decision making. However this relationship remains poorly understood.
The aim of this study was to relate the pupil diameter with decision making using an eye tracker in a special version of the Stroop task. In this paradigm the subjects have to classify word stimuli according to font size and meaning as either big or small by button press responses, we use trials where the size and meaning were different (semantically incongruent) and words where meaning corresponded to the current print size value (semantically congruent). The participants were twelve, healthy and right handed young adults, who performed a variant of the Stroop task, when they answered we recorded the pupil activity in the different conditions. The variation of the pupil diameter was significantly greater after incongruent than congruent stimuli. Furthermore the pupil changes were greater when responses were incorrect. The results suggest that autonomic arousal occurs during cognitive conflict resolution. This research provides evidence about the importance of consider physiological markers, like the pupil, in decisions making. Furthermore this finding is important because allow correlate the autonomic response and cognitive processes.

Abstract 2

Relationship between decision making and pupil diameter in the Cognitive Conflict Resolution

Key words: Pupil diameter, cognitive conflict, Stroop task

The object of this study was to measure the pupil diameter with an eye tracker in a special version of the Stroop task. In this paradigm the subjects have to classify word stimuli according to font size as either big or small by button press responses. The participants were twelve, healthy and right handed young adults, who performed a variant of the Stroop task, when they answered we recorded the pupil activity in the different conditions (congruent words or incongruent words). The variation of the pupil diameter was significantly greater after incongruent than congruent stimuli. Furthermore the pupil changes were greater when responses were incorrect. The results suggest that autonomic arousal occurs during cognitive conflict resolution. This findings are important because allow correlate autonomic responses and cognitive processes.

Abstract

Although cognitive efforts were reported to elicit global autonomic arousal, which cognitive processes associate with autonomic arousal has not been clear. We investigated autonomic arousal across measuring pupil changes during the Stroop task. We compared cognitive conflict conditions (incongruent vs. congruent stimuli) and between erroneous and correct responses.Pupil changes were significantly greater at the beginning of each trial block. The variation of the pupil diameter were significantly greater with incongruent than congruent stimuli. Furthemore the pupil changes were greater when responses were incorrect. The results suggested that autonomic arousal occurs during cognitive conflict resolution. This findings are important because permitted to do a correlation between autonomic responses and cognitive processes.

Presentation

Hi

My name is Rocío, I´m Psychologist and I´m studing a Master in Neuroscience. My aim is understand how the nervous system, specifically the visual system, created a continuos experience, this line of research is called the binding problem and consists in two big questions 1) how brains segregate elements in complex patterns of data and 2) how the unity of conscious perception is brought about by the distributed activities of the central nervous system.

About this course, I hope to improve my english skills because I want to speak english fluent in any circunstance and with different people.

Thanks by read

See you

Rocío