Man Can Change His Pupil Size on Command
DannyB writes:
Man can change his pupil size on command, once thought an impossible feat:
A 23-year-old student in Germany can shrink and enlarge his pupils on demand, according to a new case report - a feat that was previously thought to be impossible.
[....] 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
[....] But no one thought it was possible to change pupil size by directly controlling it like a muscle - that is, until a student of psychology at Ulm University in Germany contacted Strauch after taking one of his courses.
[....] When he was about 15 or 16 years old, the young man - identified in the case report by his initials, D.W. - realized that he could change the size of his pupils. [...] But D.W. didn't notice that he had this ability until he played computer games for long periods of time.
Without using any indirect method, D.W. could dilate his pupils up to 0.09 inches (2.4 millimeters) in diameter and constrict them to 0.03 inches (0.88 mm) in diameter. What's more, even at the closest point an object can be for the eye to still see it in focus, in which the pupil is already "maximally" constricted (imagine holding up a pencil in front of the eyes and moving it closer to the face and stopping at the point before it becomes blurry), D.W. could voluntarily constrict his pupil even more. By doing this, D.W. improved his focus and could see objects clearly nearly two times closer to his face than he could if he wasn't controlling his pupil size.
Yet another amazing marketable skill developed by playing computer games.
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