EEG signals index a global signature of arousal embedded in neuronal population recordings

Electroencephalography (EEG) has long been used to index brain states, from early studies describing activity during visual stimulation to modern work employing complex perceptual tasks. These studies shed light on brain-wide signals but lacked explanatory power at the single neuron level. Similarly, single neuron studies can suffer from inability to measure brain-wide signals. Here, we combined these techniques while monkeys performed a change detection task and discovered a link between EEG and a signal embedded in spiking responses. This ‘slow drift’ was associated with arousal: decreases in pre-stimulus α power/increases in P1 amplitude were accompanied by :1) increases in pupil size, false alarm rate and saccade velocity; and 2) decreases in microsaccade rate and reaction time. These results show that brain-wide EEG signals can be used to index modes of activity acquired from direct neural recordings, that in turn reflect global changes in brain state that influence perception and behavior.