ArticleNature communications2025
Pupil size reveals arousal level fluctuations in human sleep.
Article in Nature communications, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed.
- Cardiovascular Responses to Natural and Auditory Evoked Slow Waves Predict Post-Sleep Cardiac Function.Journal of sleep research · 2026Trial
- Sleep and cardiac autonomic modulation in older adults: Insights from an at-home study with auditory deep sleep stimulation.Journal of sleep research · 2025Trial
- Article
- Infra-slow (<0.1 Hz) Modulation of Human Brain Pulsations in Awake and Sleep States.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Arousal state modulates human hippocampal ripples.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Noradrenergic infraslow rhythm during sleep is the critical link between heart-rate dynamics and memory consolidation.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- The infraslow fluctuation of sigma power during sleep and its links to markers of arousal and memory reactivation across development.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The Pupil-Brain System at Rest: Spontaneous Pupil Fluctuations as Markers of Neuromodulatory and Network Dynamics.Psychophysiology · 2026Review
- Polarizer-assisted pupillometry through closed eyelids, overcoming pupil position dependence.Journal of biomedical optics · 2026Article
- NeuroPupil: A generalization-first framework for scalable and biologically informative cross-species pupillometry.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Cortical firing dynamics during micro-arousals vary with sleep/wake history and micro-arousal duration.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Article
- Rocking-induced sleep enhancement promotes motor learning through transcriptional and synaptic remodelling.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Vigilance state dissociation induced by 5-MeO-DMT in mice.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Coordinated infraslow cortical oscillations of neuromodulators during NREM sleep.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Norepinephrine-mediated arousal fluctuations drive inverted U-shaped functional connectivity dynamics.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Attentional failures after sleep deprivation are locked to joint neurovascular, pupil and cerebrospinal fluid flow dynamics.Nature neuroscience · 2025Article
- An early surge of norepinephrine along brainstem pathways drives sensory-evoked awakening.Science advances · 2025Article
- Corticotropin-releasing hormone modulates NREM sleep consolidation through the thalamic reticular nucleus.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Modulating cortical excitability and cortical arousal by pupil self-regulation.Nature communications · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Recent animal research has revealed the intricate dynamics of arousal levels that are important for maintaining proper sleep resilience and memory consolidation. In humans, changes in arousal level are believed to be a determining characteristic of healthy and pathological sleep but tracking arousal level fluctuations has been methodologically challenging. Here we measured pupil size, an established indicator of arousal levels, by safely taping the right eye open during overnight sleep and tested whether pupil size affects cortical response to auditory stimulation. We show that pupil size dynamics change as a function of important sleep events across different temporal scales. In particular, our results show pupil size to be inversely related to the occurrence of sleep spindle clusters, a marker of sleep resilience. Additionally, we found pupil size prior to auditory stimulation to influence the evoked response, most notably in delta power, a marker of several restorative and regenerative functions of sleep. Recording pupil size dynamics provides insights into the interplay between arousal levels and sleep oscillations.
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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.