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Man can change his pupil size on command
- revolvingocelot 5y agoIf you're not down to read garbled blogspam, here's the actual paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167876021008448 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016787602...
- fallat 5y agoI didn't think this was special? I've done this in the mirrior? Not fast or anything, but it is "on demand".
- mkotowski 5y ago> It was previously known that some people can change their pupil size at will, but by using indirect methods. > For example, researchers already knew that just thinking about the sun could constrict the pupils and that thinking of a dark room or mentally calculating something could dilate them, […] Apparently, it is about changing the pupil’s size without any physical or mental stimulus.
- AQuantized 5y agoHow would you be able to tell if they were using 'mental stimulus' or not?
- weeblewobble 5y agoIt's in the abstract of the paper. They used fMRI
- evandrofisico 5y agoI've done this since my childhood and honestly thought that everybody was able to do that.
- mixologic 5y agoYeah, my wife can do this too, always been one of her go-to "human party tricks"
- aliswe 5y agoIndeed, i can do this too. I stopped after they diverged into different sizes (one being enlarged and one being shrunk), as I became a bit worried it was perhaps dangerous. They were restored within a few minutes, though.
- superflit 5y agoSame as me. I can do that. Usually I ask a friend to count up to 3 and then on 3 I dilate the pupils immediately.
- smcleod 5y agoCame here to say this as well, I can change mine without moving when looking in a mirror - to me it "feels" like I'm focusing my eyes on something that isn't there.
- tomthe 5y agoSame here. I used this to impress my friends in primary school. I couldn't find another use for it though.
- tandem5000 5y agoI can also blur my eyes deliberately and I sometimes use it to get a better idea of the gestalt aesthetics during drawing or graphics design work.
- isoprophlex 5y agoIf you're interested, the article mentions that they're looking for more people with the ability. Theres some contact email address shown near the end.
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y agoThat's just a trick to find the aliens hiding in the population.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoWouldn't blinking with your third eyelids give it away though?
- Sohcahtoa82 5y agoAppropriate username. On topic, though, I tried it, and changing what I'm focused on doesn't change my pupil size. But maybe I wasn't going far enough? I just looked in a mirror, focused on a spec of dust on the mirror, then changed focus to the image of something behind me, and my pupils didn't change at all.
- sethammons 5y agoInstead of focusing like that, think about crossing your eyes but keep them in place. It is like changing the depth of focus, but different.
- dingocat 5y agoDitto, I can do it as well. I can best describe it as looking at an object and shifting it in/out of focus.
- ygjb 5y agoSame. I always lumped it in with "can't curl my tongue" and "cilantro tastes like soap" types of genetic differences...
- tzs 5y agoI've got a weird "can't do what apparently most people can do" one and have wondered if it is genetic. I can't walk while urinating. If I've started urinating and realize that I should be standing a little bit farther forward or back or to the side I have to stop, move, and restart. I asked once on some other forum if others have the same restriction and everyone claimed they can easily walk while urinating.
- smunky 5y agotry peeing your pants - just a little and where there won't be serious repercussions. it kind of illuminates the line between the conditioned and the physical - y'know
- hn8788 5y agoA quick search online brings up multiple articles dating back a few years with examples of the same thing. It's not "an impossible feat". https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160229-the-sea-nomad-children-who-see-like-dolphins https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160229-the-sea-nomad-ch...
- revolvingocelot 5y agoBut it says "once thought an impossible feat". That's cromulent journalism; helps disseminate the idea that it isn't.
- justinclift 5y agoYeah. I've been able to do this for years. Not immediately, but with some concentration and focus when standing in front of a mirror. Works probably 75-80% of the time. So, "impossible feat"... how would they even think that?
- monitron 5y agoIf it takes time and is not wholly reliable, it sounds like you might be using one of the "indirect methods" they mentioned in the article.
- msdrigg 5y agoI can change the focal point of my eyes on command to a far away point or a close one, and I have noticed that this reliably makes my pupil get slightly larger or smaller.
- SamBam 5y agoYeah, the article mentions that as the early way the man learned to do it, before being able to directly control the muscle.
- monitron 5y agoThat's neat. I wonder if the pupil is actually changing size, or if it's the changing shape of the lens that is making it appear so. If you look into a camera lens as the focus is changed, the inner parts of the camera do appear to change size.
- hypertele-Xii 5y agoI was once asked what drugs I had taken, which confused me because I had taken none. A mirror inspection revealed that my pupils were hella dialated, for no apparent reason. "On command" seems a plausible stretch from "spontaneously for no reason."
- bipson 5y agoHm, not really. There are several reasons why you might have involuntarily diluted pupils, e.g. arousal, i.e. triggering a entirely natural response to a stimulus, even if it the stimulus is aehm "imaginary"/a thought (thinking about the sun). This is called indirect control in the posted article. Having voluntary control over your pupils is something entirely different, and just because you have dilated your pupils "by accident" doesn't mean your short of controlling them.
- macksd 5y agoThat doesn't seem to jive with their tests, like doing it on-demand, extending focus range beyond normal limits, or the brain activity.
- BiteCode_dev 5y agoSince we now know that some people can change their heart beat at will, their body temperature or their immune system response, and that it's something you can train, I don't think anybody find that very surprising. But good to know.
- dumbfounder 5y agoI don't think anyone can control their heart muscle directly, but rather through meditation calm themselves and then their heart slows down. And body temperature is not controlled by a muscle so that is probably meditative as well. No comment on the immune system part.
- RealityVoid 5y agoIs there any actual differece to a muscle if you think about it and it happens?
- scld 5y agoI'd consider "controlling" something to be more direct, but that's semantics I guess. If I heard "control heartbeat", I'd think more like breathing, where one could "hold their heart" like they "hold their breath". If meditation lowers heartbeat and temperature, I imagine that it's "control" in the strictest sense, but I'd use "influence" or some other term if I was personally describing it.
- BiteCode_dev 5y agoYou can actually up your heartbeat and temperature too, but you are right, it's more influencing that direct control. A muscle is instant and precise.
- pjerem 5y agoHave you already felt being conscious of your breathing and feeling like being unable to let it go back to automatic control ? Well … > one could "hold their heart" … now that sounds creepy.
- Razengan 5y agoAnd some can see a fappilion more colors than the rest (terrachromats), and now COVID has caused some people to lose their sense of smell.. :( Maybe in the future we’ll have to target products and services for wildly different human hardware just as we have to do now for age, sex, computers etc. “This product is only for people with Level 2 Eyes”
- tsimionescu 5y agoThis reminds me of the Bene Gesserit and other schools that sprung up in Frank Herbert's Dune. Once computing technology was forbidden, these schools started research in 'human technologies', learning to control and use their own (or another's) body as a kind of machine. I do wonder if there is any possibility of actually doing things like extending conscious control over more bodily functions, if we were to try at it for a few thousand years (both directly and through selective breeding).
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- toss1 5y agoYes. Look into practices of Tibetan monks and Indian Yogis. They specifically train their bodies to do extraordinary things. One example is that they will meditate outside in near- or sub-freezing temperatures and have cold wet sheets placed on their skin, which they will heat and dry by controlling their metabolism (no shivering involved)[1]. I'd not be surprised to find that these studies and practices were an inspiration for Herbert's idea in Dune. [1] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2002/04/meditation-changes-temperatures/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2002/04/meditation-ch...
- snovv_crash 5y agoAnother book that explores this is A Deepness In The Sky, where people can be infected with a virus that can produce neurotoxins and be directed by MRI. It is used to provide "Focus", a sort of autistic savant state where people can be turned into hyper-specialized computers, although at a higher level of abstract than normal.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago> sort of autistic savant state where people can be turned into hyper-specialized computers, although at a higher level of abstract than normal. That’s me after my Vyvanse dose kicks-in…
- _tom_ 5y ago
- Maxburn 5y agoThis brings us one step closer to Bene Gesserit prana-bindu nerve and muscle control https://dunescholar.com/2020/08/28/the-bene-gesserits-nerve-and-muscle-control/ https://dunescholar.com/2020/08/28/the-bene-gesserits-nerve-...
- jaybrendansmith 5y agoOr Larry Niven's "A Gift From Earth" where the protagonist can make their pupils to contract and thereby cause others to lose interest in them (psi invisibility) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Gift_from_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Gift_from_Earth
- Kaibeezy 5y agoOr Data while playing poker, although synth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9851-SsDBc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9851-SsDBc
- Zenst 5y agoWonder if he is just going into a lucid dream state (day dreaming) and recalling being in the pitch black (enlarging the eye's via muscle memory) or looking at the sun to contract them. Maybe something folks could try - set your phone to selfie - think of looking at the sun/really bright light vivid memory recall event and then do the same recalling an event of your memory in which you was in the total dark (camping trip perhaps).
- drcongo 5y agoIt says in the article that he's not doing that.
- edgedetector 5y agoLucid dreaming refers to dreaming while aware that you are dreaming. Day dreaming is just getting lost in one's imagination while one is awake. These are two different phenomena.
- lsllc 5y agoDupe from a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28272128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28272128
- levischoen 5y agoYes but can he lower or raise his cholesterol at will?
- macksd 5y agoWhy would you want to raise your cholesterol?
- callesgg 5y agoI have meet a person like that before. He showed me as a party trick. Can’t be that unique.
- MrHus 5y ago"The researchers can't say for sure that D.W. was directly controlling his pupils, but from their many tests, they did not find any evidence that he was using indirect strategies." By reading this paragraph it states that they cannot know for sure. This makes the article's title very "clickbaity" to me.
- 123pie123 5y agoI just told the other half about this story and she said that she used to be able to do that. maybe it's not that uncommon? she's going to try again later and then email them if she can still do it
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- delayclose2 5y agoI guess this doesn't bode well for that pupil-dilation test for psychopathy, huh?
- jessaustin 5y agoWhen dental assisting, it has been challenging to discover how many people have no voluntary control over their own tongues.
- lostlogin 5y agoMRI tech here: I’m surprised how many appear to have no control over their limbs. Please keep still.
- BitterAmethyst 5y agoDon't make me contort into an awkward position inside a screaming metal disk then :(
- lostlogin 5y agoWhen we run it in ‘quiet’ mode it’s so slow and the pictures aren’t as nice. But broadly, yes.
- monitron 5y agoOn behalf of patients, we're sorry! The first time I had an MRI, my tech told me over the speaker that I was moving around too much. I was really surprised as I'd thought I was staying completely still! I had another one more recently in which I apparently did much better. The trick for me seems to be to focus on my breathing and mental relaxation rather than trying to consciously "hold still."
- lostlogin 5y ago> On behalf of patients, we're sorry! I do try not to be mean - some of my kind don’t!
- amelius 5y agoHint: it's easier to keep limbs still if you can rest them against some rigid part in at least 2 dimensions, and from a comfortable position of the rest of the body. E.g. a hand is easy to keep still if it rests on a mold of a hand (doesn't even need to be the same hand as long as it matches roughly in size). This also provides a reference for the person, so they know where to keep their hand.
- hnthrowaway8251 5y agoI can "tremble" my eyes, but never thought about how the pupil can be affected. I can change how I focus, too, is this common?
- cryptica 5y agoI can also do this. I can make my sight go blurry on demand. I didn't realize that my eyes were trembling until someone else watched me doing it and told me so. It doesn't feel like trembling, it feels more like staring into empty space. I think that's how I discovered this trick; I was trying to train myself to stare into the void.
- ho_schi 5y agoIn Ulm, um Ulm und um Ulm herum. // edit This is a famous tongue twister: https://www.ulm.de/tourismus/besucherinfos/in-ulm,-um-ulm-und-um-ulm-herum https://www.ulm.de/tourismus/besucherinfos/in-ulm,-um-ulm-un... I assumed people get the joke. And the article mentions folding the tongue.
- del_operator 5y agoI came expecting satire, reading up to the video games eye training amused, but stopped mid way confused by the level of effort going into confirming its novelty. O’ fortuna, the things we learned in the 21st century.
- zfxfr 5y agoWow! I did not know nobody could do it. I am personally more impressed by people who can move their earlobe I can't do this but I. can change my pupil size. I just somehow imagine looking farther when in front of a mirror.
- finnh 5y agoI never thought my my ability to move my ears as "impressive", thanks! FWIW the muscle that surrounds the ear from behind is under direct control for me, like any other muscle. I can move the ears independently of one another. But i sure can't raise the quizzical eyebrow over my right eye, despite being able to with my left. Funny how your nervous system can have something so dialed on one side but ghosts the other.
- dec0dedab0de 5y agoWhen I was first figuring out how to move my ears as a kid it was all one motion with moving my scalp. I just thought it felt neat, and I was doing it all the time. Then I did it while getting a haircut and the lady freaked out because my hair was just moving back and forth, she made me do it for all the employees. I later figured out how to just move the ears, and would try to control them separately, but never got that working. I feel like I just dug up a 30 year old feature request.
- w7 5y agoI believe that would be one of the "indirect methods" that's known and described in the articles as "mental effort". Apparently the person described in the article can do it without indirect methods, and also "feel" the muscles involved. From what's described it's almost as natural as moving an arm for them.
- h2odragon 5y ago"Once thought impossible," apparently, by people who have no exposure to the individual variability of humans, no faith in self-reported anecdata, or at least no desire to consider anything less philosophically perfect than spherical friction-less cows when contemplating biology.
- Kinrany 5y agoThe difference between impossible and merely rare is important: if something is merely rare, sometimes it can be trained and stop being rare. Individual variability doesn't make people fly. It's reasonable to think there are things no one can do.
- h2odragon 5y agoIt's completely reasonable to think that no one can fly. But then we nibble at that, cuz we want to fly; and we add caveats to the rule. it becomes "People can't fly:" - without mechanical assistance, - without at least a wingsuit and a tall place to jump from, - in standard gravity, etc. So pretty much a re-affirmation of your first point.
- amelius 5y agoThis is crazy. And meanwhile, I have trouble releasing the muscles in my neck, upper back and jaw.
- dec0dedab0de 5y agoA friend of mine can do this. When she gets angry she makes them go back and forth while staring you down, it's fairly intimidating. She didn't realize she was doing it until I mentioned it to her though, she said she was just focussing on different things.
- Decabytes 5y agoI've always wondered what the limits of mind over matter were. Like if I practiced every day, Could I learn to move my toes individually or with more dexterity? Could I focus on that random muscle that twitches in my leg and get it to stop, or move it myself?
- chromaton 5y agoYou can definitely improve foot dexterity. People who have lost their hands get much better through practice.
- dec0dedab0de 5y agoWhen someone asks me to teach them how to play drums, I spin my fingers in opposite directions, and tell them that its their first lesson. Someone told me it was impossible in 7th grade, and I spent the next 3 days fixated on it until I could do it. I match it with drums because every step in drums is about having your body to do things your brain doesn't want it to, especially in the beginning. I like to think of things like yoga, meditation, and prayer as a messy abstraction layer for controlling the parts of your body you normally can not. Created over millenniums of black-box reverse engineering by people of different levels of skill and honesty who are not sharing their results. One of the things guided meditation, and hypnotists will do is have you purposely relax each muscle group one at a time. Though for a specific twitch, that really depends on what is causing it. I wish there was more skeptical, but open minded research into ancient practices. It seems it's all either people who blindly believe in their flavor of magic, or people who go in assuming it's nonsense and miss the step between the action and the result. To put it more succinctly, mind over matter is enough of an issue that we have double blind studies to account for the placebo effect.
- SamBam 5y ago> I spin my fingers in opposite directions Trying to work out why this would be difficult, since it doesn't seem to be, so my first assumption ought to be that I'm doing this wrong. If I point in front of me I can twirl my pointers in a circle such that they go in opposite directions. This seems to be the most intuitive and trivial, because both are actually doing the same movement (inward and outward at the same time). I can also twirl them so they spin in the same direction, this seems only slightly more difficult, but if I just think of them as tracing the wheels of car it's trivial. Then again, I've never had any trouble patting my head and rubbing my stomach either.
- aritmo 5y agoDoesn't that happen to anyone when you focus near or far? Am I missing something?
- calderwoodra 5y agoI can do this too, is it supposed to be impressive?
- geon 5y agoIs it what the diving Monken people does? https://www.sciencealert.com/these-sea-nomad-children-can-see-underwater-like-dolphins https://www.sciencealert.com/these-sea-nomad-children-can-se...
- shahar2k 5y agoI had a friend's growing up who would do this as a trick... Didn't know it was a big deal! I can move my nose in 4 ways and both ears independently? Does that count?
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y agoI am not sure how ground breaking this is. Pupils accommodate. Focusing on something far will make your pupil get larger and focusing on something near will make it get smaller. Basically every normal person’s pupil does this. My guess is that person in the article is actually just changing focus without really thinking about it. Given that changing focus activates muscles in the eyes, you might be convinced that you are actively controlling the muscles in the eyes directly, and not through changing focus. In addition, the “finding” of this article is based entirely on the persons subjective experience. Thus I think the professor found someone who accomodates as normal, but has a subjective sensation of controlling his pupils when he changes his focus.
- dorkwood 5y agoYou can do this, too. To dilate your pupils, defocus your eyes. Let things go as blurry as possible. To constrict again, focus on a small detail in the distance.
- growlix 5y agoIt seems like there are a lot of commenters claiming to be able to do the same thing who didn't read the abstract: "...various indirect mechanisms possibly mediating this phenomenon were tested: accommodation, brightness, increases in arousal by increased mental effort. None of these behavioral tests could support an indirect strategy as the mode of action"
- cryptica 5y agoI can also blur my eyes and make them vibrate. But I never checked how that affects my pupils.
- kobyconrad 5y agoThis is crazy
- danjc 5y agoI have Adie’s pupil where one pupil is abnormally dilated (mostly in indoor light for me). A little disconcerting that one of the signs of brain damage is different dilation of your pupils so if I’m ever in an accident or something I hope that’s not going to be a problem. I’d love to be able to control pupil dilation voluntarily as I know people notice it in meetings, etc (esp in-person before covid).
- canjobear 5y agoThe video which you all came for is here: https://osf.io/6amrp/ https://osf.io/6amrp/
- daedalus2027 5y agoI can do that too since I was a kid
- unity1001 5y agoThats a good start. Now he should move on to adjusting the sizes of other things on demand and start teaching it online...
- wildlogic 5y agoThis is a random tangent, but if are visually impaired and you look through a pinhole in your hand, you can see clearly!
- peter303 5y agoSince sedatives dilate and stimulants constrict, I just imagine various trips Ive been on to change pupil size.
- oxplot 5y agoI am the only person I know in my group of friends who can change the focus of my eyes independently of the distance of the object I’m looking at. In other words, I can make vision go blurry (wide eyes open) without it going double.
- sourthyme 5y agoI can do this too, but never thought to ask if anyone else could. How rare are we talking about?
- bejelentkezni 5y agoI can do it just fine. I think most people can.
- raxxorrax 5y agoIsn't that the mechanism for these magic images like this: http://www.magiceye3ds.com/3dpics/img/043magiceye3d.jpg http://www.magiceye3ds.com/3dpics/img/043magiceye3d.jpg Some people can just adjust their focus and see it immediately. Some need to put their nose through the monitor first. edit: you should see a heart, but if you resize the image you might see something different.
- oxplot 5y agoThat requires you crossing your eyes, or look past the image, which makes your vision double.
- dozzman 5y agoI can also do this. I do it as eye exercises when I’m staring at screens for a long time.