ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2025
Adaptive arousal regulation: Pharmacologically shifting the peak of the Yerkes-Dodson curve by catecholaminergic enhancement of arousal.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Arousal does not enhance the dominant spatial scope of attention.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2026Article
- Phasic and tonic arousal distinctly shape human decision bias.Communications biology · 2026Article
- An experimental paradigm to manipulate physiological arousal using consecutive successes.iScience · 2025Article
- Uncovering Emotional and Identity-Driven Dimensions of Entertainment Consumption in a Transitional Digital Culture.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Adaptive arousal regulation: Pharmacologically shifting the peak of the Yerkes-Dodson curve by catecholaminergic enhancement of arousal.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- The performance of mind: from movement, mental states, and consciousness.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Performance typically peaks at moderate arousal levels, consistent with the Yerkes-Dodson law, as confirmed by recent human and mouse pupillometry studies. Arousal states are influenced by neuromodulators like catecholamines (noradrenaline and dopamine) and acetylcholine. To investigate their contributions to this law, we pharmacologically enhanced arousal while measuring human decision-making and spontaneous arousal fluctuations via pupil size. The catecholaminergic agent atomoxetine increased overall arousal and shifted the entire arousal-performance curve, suggesting a relative arousal mechanism where performance adapts to arousal fluctuations within arousal states. In contrast, the cholinergic agent donepezil did not measurably affect arousal or the curve. We modeled these findings in a neurobiologically plausible computational framework, showing how catecholaminergic modulation alters a disinhibitory neural circuit that encodes sensory evidence for decision-making. This work suggests that performance adapts flexibly to arousal fluctuations, ensuring optimal performance in each and every global arousal state.
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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 Socratic graph.