# Investigating the Effect of Arousal on Visual Processing

> **NIH NIH R01** · BOSTON UNIVERSITY (CHARLES RIVER CAMPUS) · 2024 · $363,443

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
How do states of arousal affect how we process visual information? Whether driven by a momentary startle
response or by lower-frequency fluctuations in mood or energization, arousal states play a key regulatory role in
our daily lives and exert widespread modulatory effects on neural information processing. Despite the ubiquitous
role that arousal levels likely play in modulating cognition, the precise mechanisms by which arousal state alters
neural representations remain unclear. One of the prevailing theories for arousal posits that the locus-coeruleus
norepinephrine system alters representations by modulating the input-output gain of neural systems. The visual
system serves as an ideal test bed for testing this theory, as decades of vision science has provided a deep
understanding of the mechanisms that locally regulate the gain of response in early visual cortex. Furthermore,
well-validated measurement methods are available for quantifying response properties of vision-related neural
systems noninvasively in humans. In the proposed project, we leverage our knowledge of the neural
computations within the visual system to directly test the hypothesis that emotional arousal alters representations
via changes in the gain of representation. To do so, the proposed project will use a combination of state-of-the-
art functional neuroimaging methods paired with psychophysics to examine the influence of arousal on
fundamental properties of the human visual system: orientation, spatial frequency and contrast processing.
Taken together, these visual features play a substantial role in determining our ability to visually represent and
interact with the environment; any changes in these responses with arousal would have potentially substantial
impact on what we can and cannot see at any given moment. By revealing the manner in which visual
representations vary with arousal levels, our results will not only provide constraints for computational models of
vision and arousal, but also have the potential to establish a theoretical and empirical framework for testing
models of arousal that could eventually generalize to other systems.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10990268
- **Project number:** 1R01EY035640-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** BOSTON UNIVERSITY (CHARLES RIVER CAMPUS)
- **Principal Investigator:** Janneke Jehee
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $363,443
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-09-30 → 2029-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10990268

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10990268, Investigating the Effect of Arousal on Visual Processing (1R01EY035640-01A1). Retrieved via MORVS 2026-10-25 from https://api.morvs.ai/grant/nih/10990268. Licensed CC0.

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