ArticleNature human behaviour2018
Arousal increases neural gain via the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system in younger adults but not in older adults.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 81 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
81 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 142 citations in OpenAlex.
- Age differences in sustained attention tasks: A meta-analysis.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2021Pooled it
- Early intervention increases reactive joint attention in autistic preschoolers with arousal regulation as mediator.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2025Trial
- Fluctuations in arousal reflect latent state transitions that facilitate behavioural optimization.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Acupuncture-induced changes in locus coeruleus connectivity and memory improvement in patients with amnestic cognitive impairment.IBRO neuroscience reports · 2026Article
- Presence of a human catcher affects performance in a ball-throwing task.Experimental brain research · 2026Article
- Emotional arousal enhances narrative memories through functional integration of large-scale brain networks.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Affective distraction by emotional arousal during visual attention: a comparative study with young and older adults.Cognitive processing · 2026Article
- Both mental imagery and object-based attention regulate differential fear conditioning in the anterior insula.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2026Article
- Research progress on the role of the locus coeruleus in cognitive function.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Review
- Norepinephrine-mediated arousal fluctuations drive inverted U-shaped functional connectivity dynamics.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Eye movement evidence for locus coeruleus-noradrenaline system contributions to age differences in attention.Psychology and aging · 2025Article
- Blood oxygenation level-dependent responses in neuromodulatory nuclei and their associations with attention and memory across age groups.Neurobiology of aging · 2025Article
- Arousal increases locus coeruleus blood flow, salience-related brain responses, and modulates negative-valence attentional biases.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Locus coeruleus tonic upregulation increases selectivity to inconspicuous auditory information in autistic compared to non-autistic individuals: a combined pupillometry and electroencephalography study.Molecular autism · 2025Article
- Reward boosts cognitive control during working memory maintenance.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Age-Related Increase in Locus Ceruleus Activity and Connectivity with the Prefrontal Cortex during Ambiguity Processing.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Introducing the Glutamate-Amplifies-Noradrenergic-Effects (GANE) Model to the Neurocognitive Study of Emotion-Related Impulsivity.Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2025Article
- Article
- Locus coeruleus-related insula activation supports implicit learning.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Article
21 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 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
In younger adults, arousal amplifies attentional focus to the most salient or goal-relevant information while suppressing other information. A computational model of how the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) system can implement this increased selectivity under arousal and an fMRI study comparing how arousal affects younger and older adults' processing indicate that the amplification of salient stimuli and the suppression of non-salient stimuli are separate processes, with aging affecting suppression without impacting amplification under arousal. In the fMRI study, arousal increased processing of salient stimuli and decreased processing of non-salient stimuli for younger adults. In contrast, for older adults, arousal increased processing of both low and high salience stimuli, generally increasing excitatory responses to visual stimuli. Older adults also showed decline in LC functional connectivity with frontoparietal networks that coordinate attentional selectivity. Thus, among older adults, arousal increases the potential for distraction from non-salient stimuli.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.