The headline is not acuratly representing the contents of the article. The full quote which is where the "once thought an impossible feat" part comes from:
> That makes D.W. different from other people who have demonstrated the ability to change their pupil size, Strauch told Live Science. What's more, that he can feel the muscles in the pupils directly "is astonishing, as it was thought to be impossible."
What's new isn't controlling the pupils but to "feel the muscles directly". Not sure how that part is verified though.
Yeah. 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?
I hadn’t heard of this being an impossible feat before and I likewise don’t see why it would be. I remember from Kahneman’s work on human biases and fast/slow thinking that they used pupil dilation as a great proxy for how much conscious concentration someone is using. So I don’t see why controlling it would be such an impossible thing.
> Direct control of the pupillary musculature is deemed impossible (Loewenfeld, 1993).
Also, from the abstract, they tested to rule out "increases in arousal by increased mental effort". This is a different phenomenon than what you are discussing.
And to confirm, I knew someone in school who could do this, though I was never able to do it myself despite some notable time wasted in front of the mirror.
if a hundred people on a population of 8 billion can do it, on command, at will, immediately, it's an impossible feat.
It's not the act of changing the pupil size that's the impossible feat, it's the "doing it instantly, on command" part that's the impossible feat. Even if lots of people can change their pupil size, virtually no one can with the snap of their fingers.
This 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).
Another 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.
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.
A similar idea was in the ending of the book "The Last Cato", by Matilde Asensi.
Hypnosis is a tool that is tremendously useful for the control of vegetative functions (I am an hypnotist myself), but unfortunately it has suffered from an abundance of charlatans, like electro-medicine.
My dream is to make hypnosis available to the general public.
Came 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.
If 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.
Indeed, 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.
> 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.
I'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.
I'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?
When 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.
When learning to juggle I used a similar exercise: draw a square in the air with one hand, a triangle with the other. Another was to touch my thumb to my fingers in different patterns with each hand. Different people have wildly varying levels of difficulty with these exercises. If you find it too hard/easy just keep modifying until you find some version that is doable but hard and practice that.
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.
To nitpick, it is not as grand as mind-over-matter, but rather conscious control of things that are normally under the control of the sympathetic or parasympathetic system. IIRC the sympathetic system is more likely to be consciously influenced. Both are vital subsystems that control things like heart rate, blood pressure, etc. that you'd rather not play too much with (although it is said that you can with deep meditation).
Your question are about different things than that, and the first one is about a different thing than the second one.
Learning to move a particular muscle you don't normally use consciously (like moving your ears or your nostrils) is indeed a matter of practice. Sometimes all it takes is getting conscious that there is a muscle there, and then you improve your feedback loop between sending a command and feeling it move.
But a muscle that uncontrollably twitches is a whole different process. For instance some muscle cramps are related to dehydration or lack of certain minerals. So the cause can be more chemical than nervous system (ie coming from the nervous system).
It 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"
"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.
It'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.
Readit News
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160229-the-sea-nomad-ch...
> That makes D.W. different from other people who have demonstrated the ability to change their pupil size, Strauch told Live Science. What's more, that he can feel the muscles in the pupils directly "is astonishing, as it was thought to be impossible."
What's new isn't controlling the pupils but to "feel the muscles directly". Not sure how that part is verified though.
So, "impossible feat"... how would they even think that?
> Direct control of the pupillary musculature is deemed impossible (Loewenfeld, 1993).
Also, from the abstract, they tested to rule out "increases in arousal by increased mental effort". This is a different phenomenon than what you are discussing.
It's not the act of changing the pupil size that's the impossible feat, it's the "doing it instantly, on command" part that's the impossible feat. Even if lots of people can change their pupil size, virtually no one can with the snap of their fingers.
That’s me after my Vyvanse dose kicks-in…
https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/biofeedback/abou...
I had a professor studying using it to mitigate Reynaud's disease, https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/raynauds-dise..., to gain some control of circulation in the fingers.
But it's not like a movie, you aren't getting powers, but more shifting things to another point in their normal range.
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-ch...
Hypnosis is a tool that is tremendously useful for the control of vegetative functions (I am an hypnotist myself), but unfortunately it has suffered from an abundance of charlatans, like electro-medicine.
My dream is to make hypnosis available to the general public.
Deleted Comment
I can do that.
Usually I ask a friend to count up to 3 and then on 3 I dilate the pupils immediately.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Your question are about different things than that, and the first one is about a different thing than the second one.
Learning to move a particular muscle you don't normally use consciously (like moving your ears or your nostrils) is indeed a matter of practice. Sometimes all it takes is getting conscious that there is a muscle there, and then you improve your feedback loop between sending a command and feeling it move.
But a muscle that uncontrollably twitches is a whole different process. For instance some muscle cramps are related to dehydration or lack of certain minerals. So the cause can be more chemical than nervous system (ie coming from the nervous system).
PS: I have no particular expertise in this area.
"...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"
Individual variability doesn't make people fly. It's reasonable to think there are things no one can do.
- 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.
She didn't realize she was doing it until I mentioned it to her though, she said she was just focussing on different things.