The patient is able to focus on objects twice as close as he could if he did not check his pupils at will. Photo: Clarin Archive.
A 23-year-old German surprises the world after leaving science without arguments, which until now he believed was impossible dilate and contract the pupils at willwithout the mental tricks other people use, like imagining a dark environment or bright light.
A new study was presented in the prestigious medical body International Journal of Psychophysiology and was signed by specialists Lisa Eberhardt, Georg Grön, Martin Ulrich, Anke Huckauf and Christoph Strauch.
In the presentation it is reported that, according to his conclusions, the young psychology student object of the study exercises a direct voluntary control of the pupil size.
The contraction of the pupils in the studied patient reaches 0.8 millimeters.
the teacher Christoph Strauchof the Department of Experimental Psychology of Utrecht UniversityI found this student who does it with surprising ease.
As if it were the camera shutterthe pupils of the eyes dilate to let more light into a dark environment and shrink to limit the amount of light in a bright space, although other factors, such as sexual arousal or drug useThey can also dilate them. Two small opposing muscles make this possible. movement deemed automatic.
There are known cases of people who can change the size of their pupils using indirect methodslike thinking of the sun to contract them or making a mental calculation to dilate them.
“I showed a friend that I can shake my eyes and he noticed that my pupils have become small,” the young man said in an interview. “Contracting the pupil is like grasping, stretching something; dilating it seems to completely free something, relax the eye “, he added after saying that he has been doing it since he was 15, when I played for hours and hours in front of a video game screen.
The patient was tested to determine that there was no relationship to other sensory functions in the body.
According to Strauch, DW can dilate the diameter of his pupils by 2.4 millimeters and narrow them a little less, down to almost a millimeter. She also has the ability to contract pupils when they are usually “maximum” which allows you to focus on very close objects. Thanks to voluntary movement, he is able to focus on objects twice as close as he could if he did not check his pupils.
The medical team made the necessary tests to eliminate any possibility of cheating. The results were also negative when, for example, they measured the conductivity of the skin, which would have detected some kind of arousal, and did a fMRIwhich would detect that the areas of the brain relating to imagination and will were in use.
Researchers have no explanation for the phenomenon. They speculate that it may be an unknown neuronal connection with the ciliary ganglion or oculomotor nerve. I’m so clueless they open an email ([email protected]) for those who think they have the same ability to get in touch.
Source: Clarin
