Pupil dialation has been a fascination of mine, particularily within the last couple of months. I knew that the eyes level of dialation was correlated to various things including dopamine, norepinephrine and epinephrine.. but have been unable to find a constant in day-to-day personalities.
What have I noticed? I’ve noticed that people who are more socially anxious almost always have extraordinarily dialated eyes when I speak with them. At one point I thought that it may even be reasonable to believe this might be an index of a persons overall anxiety, but unfortunately this did not pan out as I found that often people who were behaving in a gregarious and confident manner might often have significantly more dialated pupils than all of the people he or she was surrounded by.
Developing Intelligence, however, has dug up some information that I find… useful:
Pupil diameter is gaining currency as an index of mental effort (“cognitive workload”) as well as arousal. In the most compelling finding from this literature, pupil diameter has been observed to increase with each successive item maintained in memory, up until each subject’s working memory capacity – and then to contract incrementally as each item is reported back to the experimenter. Some recent work suggests that spontaneous eye blink rate – how quickly the eyes blink in normal, everyday situations – may also be an index of prefrontal or executive processes.
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After reading this a couple days ago, I could not help but notice that I’m noticing pupil diameters… my conclusion thus far: its really hard to tell. You must be standing very close to your conversation partner, Dan
Hah. Maybe I’m just strange like that. Though, to tell you the truth, I usually notice it the most with women. Probably because I don’t mind standing closer to them, and looking them in the eye long enough to notice dialation.
Do you know if there’s any relationship with pupil dialation and intense depression, my brother is having a major depression and i’ve noticed (actually way before) that his pupils are terribly dialated ? could it indicate a specific mental condition/illness ? Do you know where i can find out? Please if you can help sent it to my e-mail!
Thanks, i’m just pretty desperate! (docters don’t take this pupil dialation into account but i’m sure its important)
Mar,
I’ve noticed a correlation that most people who are anxious/depressed seem to have dialated eyes. I tend to even be that way when I’ve missed out on sleep….
However, I doubt this will aid doctors in diagnosing anything about your brother. Sorry. There are plenty of other ways you could help your brother, however… And getting his hands on some fish oil, and perhaps neurofeedback could go a long way. So could exercise, and sleep.
Cool observations! Dilated pupils is related to fear, but dilated pupils are also be related to a significant number of other factors.
my husband has had dialated pupils all his life, he has no pain what so ever in them, and no vision problems. people always joked with him telling him he was high. he has never done any sorts of drugs, no surgerys. ever heard of it before? or know if it ios a symptom of something dangerous?
If it’s something he’s had all of his life, I doubt it’s terribly dangerous! Otherwise, it probably would’ve gotten him by now.
ok, thanks for your quick response.
Some people have large arms, some people have small arms. Some people have large pupils, some people have small pupils. Get over it.
In your first paragraph you correlated the possibility of pupil dilation to anxiety, though ruled it out when you met confident people with equal or greater dilation/constriction… I am very anxious, but present myself to people as being confident. I notice a lot of people put on a show to keep from toubleing others, or keeping the focus off of them, etc… If I were to show my anxiety, people would ask me are you okay, are you okay… After some time of this, I start to question myself… Therefore I act to be. It is truthful acting and it does create a true feeling of confidence, but I still have anxiety… Something you could add to your study as a possibility… I think you are on to something. Your body releases different chemicals, Epinephrine for anxiety which is a vasoconstricter, blood being in all parts of us, I would naturally suspect there would be some s/sx that would take place, such as the constriction of other things, some noticeable, such as the eyes, while others may not be known. Don’t give up when you hit a bump. Just kick it into 4WD and give it all you got. Seek more knowledge and find more connections incorporating the psychological aspect into your studies. Think outside the box and accept other perspectives as possibilities until you can prove them to be right. Never give up on the possibilities… The are endless.