ArticleNature communications2016
Pupil fluctuations track rapid changes in adrenergic and cholinergic activity in cortex.
Article in Nature communications, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 512 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
512 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 999 citations in OpenAlex.
- Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation may improve cognitive deficits in neuropsychiatric diseases-a systematic review.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2026Pooled it
- Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation during short-term motor practice drives cortical plasticity without behavioural improvement.The Journal of physiology · 2026Trial
- Minocycline attenuates panicogenic responses in a COTranslational psychiatry · 2026Trial
- Pharmacological and pupillary evidence for the noradrenergic contribution to reinforcement learning in Parkinson's disease.Communications biology · 2025Trial
- Transcutaneous cervical vagus nerve stimulation improves sensory performance in humans: a randomized controlled crossover pilot study.Scientific reports · 2024Trial
- Improvement of mnemonic discrimination with acute light exercise is mediated by pupil-linked arousal in healthy older adults.Neurobiology of aging · 2024Trial
- Cognitive reappraisal influences the organization of emotional episodes in memory.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Vagal nerve stimulation induces vascular oscillations and enhances long-term learning.iScience · 2026Article
- Fluctuations in arousal reflect latent state transitions that facilitate behavioural optimization.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Article
- Trial-by-trial fluctuations in decision criterion shape confidence.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Task-irrelevant stimuli robustly drive phasic pupil-linked arousal but only weakly affect memory formation.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Modality-general sensitivity of pupil responses to regularity violations.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Medial premotor cortex as a potential reservoir of reward expectancy signals influencing the primate frontoparietal network.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Spatially structured heterogeneity shapes large-scale cortical dynamics in a model of the human cortex.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Reduced myopia progression with low-dose atropine in DIMS non-responders and evidence of altered pupillary light reflex kinetics.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Behavior Differentially Shapes Spontaneous Cortical Network Dynamics Across Frequencies.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Noise-invariant representations of sound emerge along the canonical cortical hierarchy.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Auditory Cortex Distinguishes between Spontaneous and Sound-Evoked Movements.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Pupil size is linked to opposite signal fluctuations between cortical BOLD and ventricular CSF.NeuroImage · 2026Article
452 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Rapid variations in cortical state during wakefulness have a strong influence on neural and behavioural responses and are tightly coupled to changes in pupil size across species. However, the physiological processes linking cortical state and pupil variations are largely unknown. Here we demonstrate that these rapid variations, during both quiet waking and locomotion, are highly correlated with fluctuations in the activity of corticopetal noradrenergic and cholinergic projections. Rapid dilations of the pupil are tightly associated with phasic activity in noradrenergic axons, whereas longer-lasting dilations of the pupil, such as during locomotion, are accompanied by sustained activity in cholinergic axons. Thus, the pupil can be used to sensitively track the activity in multiple neuromodulatory transmitter systems as they control the state of the waking brain.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.