Reconstruction and analysis of the pupil dilation signal: Application to a psychophysiological affective protocol

Pupil dilation (PD) dynamics reflect the interactions of sympathetic and parasympathetic innervations in the iris muscle. Different pupillary responses have been observed with respect to emotionally characterized stimuli. Evidences of the correlation between PD and respiration, heart rate variability (HRV) and blood pressure (BP) are present in literature, making the pupil dilation a candidate for estimating the activity state of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS), in particular during stressful and/or emotionally characterized stimuli. The aim of this study is to investigate whether both slow and fast PD dynamics can be addressed to characterized different affective states. Two different frequency bands were considered: the classical autonomic band [0-0.45] Hz and a very high frequency (VHF) band [0.45-5] Hz. The pupil dilation signals from 13 normal subjects were recorded during a psychological protocol suitable to evoke particular affective states. An elaborate reconstruction of the missing data (blink events and artifacts) was performed to obtain a more reliable signal, particularly in the VHF band. Results show a high correlation between the arousal of the event and the power characteristics of the signal, in all frequencies. In particular, for the “Anger” condition, we can observe 10 indices out of 13 significantly different with respect to “Baseline” counterparts. These preliminary results suggest that both slow and fast oscillations of the PD can be used to characterize affective states.