How the eyes reflect your sleepiness
12-12-2012
They say that the eyes are the window to the soul and while this mightn’t be true all the time recent research shows you can tell at least a few things about someone (though not necessarily about their soul) by looking into their eyes. One thing you can find out is how tired they are. Looking at how a person's pupils are able to respond to stimuli, like how fast they are able to respond, and to what degree, in addition to looking at their blink rate, is a reliable way of measuring how alert they are.
Beforehand, alertness was mainly dictated by pupil dilation and contraction but the recent research has shown that you can get a far more accurate reading if you also factor in their blink rate as well, meaning that the test has been further refined.
The researchers who have been working on this see a number of useful applications for these findings. Key amongst them is developing an easy to administer test that could be used on people who work at high risk jobs, like pilots, truck drivers and miners. If they are too tired to work the test will indicate this and the employer is able to tell them they cannot work.
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