There is such an institute in Germany — the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry. It is notable for the fact that within its walls research is often carried out into the relationships between mental illnesses and somatic manifestations. Today I want to describe, in my opinion, a very interesting study by German scientists studying the relationship between such seemingly different things as pupil width and depression.
While the subjects were there (I’m already describing this experiment, if anything), the researchers played a simple game of chance with them. Naturally with money! That’s what passion is for, so that there is a reward at the end. Really, right? A small addition — among the volunteers in the experiment there were people diagnosed with depression.
We all know from various films where there are scenes of gambling that, at the prospect of winning, the pupils tend to dilate and to hide this marker, many heroes of such scenes use dark glasses. And so, this experiment demonstrated that awareness of the fact of a possible winning situation did not have such a strong impact on the active reaction of the pupils in people suffering from depression. Now I’ll tell you more…
In people without depression — everything is clear — the pupils dilate at the prospect of winning. And for people with depression too, but in a different way. Firstly, this reaction is not as clearly expressed as in healthy people, and secondly, the intensity of this edition — the degree of pupil dilation depends on the severity of the…
