For example, the pupil dilates in response to attractive social partners ( 1, 2). We can read a remarkable amount of information about people's cognitive processing through their pupils. These adjustments have consequences for the amount of light that hits the retina, but also for the quality of our percepts of the visual world-how we see the world and, by extension, interact with it. The pupil is constantly changing size as the musculature of the iris constricts and dilates. We use the word “filter” because the pupil is not a passive window unto the world. The first filter through which the visual world passes is the pupil. This could complement other cortical mechanisms through which cognition shapes visual perception. We propose that cognition may have co-opted control of the pupil in order to filter incoming visual information to optimize it for particular goals. Why does visual attention change the pupil light reflex? Why do mental effort and surprise cause pupil dilation? Here, we consider these functional questions as we review and synthesize two literatures on cognitive effects on the pupil: how cognition affects pupil light response and how cognition affects pupil size under constant luminance. However, the function of cortical control over the pupil remains poorly understood. This has led to the widespread use of pupil size as a peripheral measure of cortical processing in psychology and neuroscience. Over 50 years of research have established that cognitive processes influence pupil size. 3Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Seattle, WA, United States.2Department of Neurobiology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, United States.1Department of Neuroscience and Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, United States.
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