Pupillary responses to invisible brightness escape from attentional modulation

The pupillary light response (PLR) is traditionally regarded as a reflex to retinal illumination; however, recent studies have shown that it also reflects perceived or attended brightness. We examined whether pupils respond to perceptually invisible luminance under interocular suppression and most importantly, whether attention modulates such response. In experiment 1, a single bright or dark visual Gabor pattern evoked attenuated but reliable PLRs under interocular suppression, which was independent of feature-based attention manipulation. In experiment 2, spatial attention was directed to one of two Gabors (black and white) using a sustained rapid serial visual presentation task. Spatial attention modulated PLRs when the stimuli were visible but not when they were invisible under interocular suppression. These findings demonstrate that while unconscious brightness signals reach subcortical pathways, spatial attentional modulation of the PLR depends on visual awareness, revealing a cortical-subcortical gating mechanism for pupil control.