Change-point oddball elicits pupil-linked signatures of Bayesian belief updating
- 1Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, University of Amsterdam
Abstract
The auditory oddball protocol is widely used to study neural responses to unexpected events. In conventional designs, however, stimulus statistics are stationary: deviants do not indicate environmental change and therefore should not drive learning. Here, we introduce change-point oddball, a passive, no-report protocol in which the standard-oddball mapping reverses at unpredictable change points, requiring inference over latent environmental states. We measured pupil-linked arousal in three human cohorts. Pupil responses were larger for state-specific oddballs than standards, decayed across newly established standards after state changes, and scaled with model-derived change-point probability. A many-standards control experiment implicated a prediction-based rather than repetition-based mechanism. Finally, within participants, stronger pupil encoding of change-point probability during the passive task was associated with greater change-point-sensitive belief updating in a separate active navigation task. Thus, passive change-point oddball preserves core signatures of adaptive belief updating, enabling cross-species and clinical investigations.
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BibTeX
@misc{kopel2026changepoint,
title = {{Change-point oddball elicits pupil-linked signatures of Bayesian belief updating}},
author = {L. Kopel and J. M. Hoomans and E. van Gastel and J. V. Tijhuis and M. van de Graaf and M. Shafik and S. Matthijsse and P. R. Murphy and S. van Gaal and M. Suzuki and J. W. de Gee},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.64898/2026.09.25.754382},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.25.754382v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Change-point oddball elicits pupil-linked signatures of Bayesian belief updating
AU - L. Kopel
AU - J. M. Hoomans
AU - E. van Gastel
AU - J. V. Tijhuis
AU - M. van de Graaf
AU - M. Shafik
AU - S. Matthijsse
AU - P. R. Murphy
AU - S. van Gaal
AU - M. Suzuki
AU - J. W. de Gee
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/25
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.09.25.754382
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.25.754382v1
AB - The auditory oddball protocol is widely used to study neural responses to unexpected events. In conventional designs, however, stimulus statistics are stationary: deviants do not indicate environmental change and therefore should not drive learning. Here, we introduce change-point oddball, a passive, no-report protocol in which the standard-oddball mapping reverses at unpredictable change points, requiring inference over latent environmental states. We measured pupil-linked arousal in three human cohorts. Pupil responses were larger for state-specific oddballs than standards, decayed across newly established standards after state changes, and scaled with model-derived change-point probability. A many-standards control experiment implicated a prediction-based rather than repetition-based mechanism. Finally, within participants, stronger pupil encoding of change-point probability during the passive task was associated with greater change-point-sensitive belief updating in a separate active navigation task. Thus, passive change-point oddball preserves core signatures of adaptive belief updating, enabling cross-species and clinical investigations.
ER -