Schedule of Events | Symposia

Pupil Size as a Marker of Attentional Effort Across Suboptimal Attention States

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 29, 2025, 3:00 – 5:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Agnieszka Zuberer1* (azuberer@gmail.com), Ziheng Wang1*, Melanni Nanni-Zepeda1, Michael Esterman2,3,4, Flavio Frohlich1; 1Department of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, USA, 2Department of Psychiatry, University of Tübignen, Tübignen, Germany, 3National Center for PTSD, VA Boston Healthcare System, United States, 4Boston Attention and Learning Laboratory, VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston, MA, 02130, USA, 5Department of Psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA

Sustained attention (SA) is not sustained but instead fluctuates from moment to moment over seconds to minutes. Previous work has shown that SA alternates between optimal and suboptimal attention states, so called "in-zone" states of stable focus and "out-zone" states of attention lapses and variable behavior. While these fluctuations are linked to brain activity and connectivity, little research has examined their relationship with attentional effort and its role in attentional optimality. To address this, 25 healthy adults underwent 4 sessions of the gradual onset continuous performance task (~8min each) with concurrent pupil size (PS) recordings. We tested the association between PS and attentional optimality, measured by reaction time variance, finding a mean Spearman correlation of r =.11土.15. The mean within-subject correlation was significantly greater than zero (P < 0.001, two-tailed Wilcoxon signed rank test). A linear mixed-effects model predicting commission error rate by PS level (high/low) and attentional optimality (in-the-zone/out-of-the-zone) revealed that higher PS during suboptimal attention states to be associated with higher commission error rate compared to low PS in this suboptimal attention state (interaction pupil state x attention state: β=0.102, 95% CI [0.011, 0.193], p=0.028). This suggests that greater PS may reflect the mobilization of additional attentional resources in response to poorer task performance. In contrast, commission error rates did not differ with PS during optimal attention, implying effective resource allocation without extra effort. These findings highlight PS as a potential marker for dissociating performance from resource mobilization, warranting further research in varying cognitive contexts.

Topic Area: ATTENTION: Nonspatial

CNS Account Login

CNS2025-Logo_FNL_HZ-150_REV

March 29–April 1  |  2025

Latest from Twitter