Circadian and Fatigue Effects on the Dynamics of the Pupillary Light Reflex

Abstract: The pupillary light reflex (PLR) is known to be driven by the photo-entrainment of intrinsically-photosensitive retinal ganglion cells. These ganglion cells are known to have retino-hypothalamic projections to the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN), which regulates circadian rhythms, and bilateral retinal projections to the pretectal area, which mediates the PLR (Dacey et al., 2005; Hattar et al., 2002, 2006). The magnitude of the PLR has previously been shown to show circadian variation (Mnch et a…