Myomancy ADHD, Dyslexia and Autism

In January Developing Intelligence ran an interesting study on how your pupils contract and dilate based on the amount of mental effort being used. Now they cover more research on how your blink rate correlates to dopamine levels.

However, a far more interesting determinant of spontaneous eye blink rate appears to be levels of cortical dopamine. If dopamine receptor 1 activity is enhanced (with D1 agonists), eye blink rate increases, and if it is blocked, eye blink rate decreases. Likewise, monkeys treated with MPTP (known to cause Parkinsonian type symptoms, a disorder associated with decreased dopaminergic activity) show reductions in eye blink rate, which is remediated by administration of D1 agonists (as are the Parkinsonian symptoms). This relationship is also robust in human populations, where people with schizophrenia show elevated blink rates and those with Parkinson’s show the opposite trend. Some research implicates the rostral ventromedial caudate nucleus in the dopaminergic modulation of eye blink rate; however, eye blink rate may be modulated only by D1 and not D2 activity.

See also: The Eyes Have It