Researchers from the Karolinska Institutet have discovered a connection between our vision and breathing. According to a recent study, which was published in The Journal of Physiology, the pupil tends to get smaller during inhalation and larger during exhalation. In other words, our breathing might directly affect our vision.The pupil’s function is to control the amount of light that enters the eye, which helps us visually perceive our surroundings. Typically, the dimmer the lighting in a room, the larger your pupil will be, as it dilates to allow more light to reach your eyes. However, other things—like head or eye injuries, certain medications and drugs, and even emotions—can impact the size of the pupil. Now, it seems that breathing can also influence it, too.“This mechanism is unique in that it is cyclical, ever-present, and requires no external stimulus,” said Artin Arshamian, associate professor at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, who led the research. “Since breathing affects brain activity and cognitive functions, the discovery may contribute to a better understanding of how our vision and attention are regulated.”New Research Suggests That Breathing and Vision Might Be ConnectedDuring the study, researchers examined how breathing affected pupil size in various contexts. For example, in some experiments, participants breathed only through their noses while others only through their mouths. Some breathed quickly while others breathed slowly. Some were resting while others were performing visual tasks. And, of course, the experiments involved different lighting conditions and fixation distances. Still, the results remained the same: “The difference in pupil size between inhalation and exhalation was large enough to theoretically affect vision,” the Karolinska Institutet reported.“Our results suggest that our vision may switch between optimizing for distinguishing small details when we inhale and detecting faint objects when we exhale, all within a single breathing cycle,” said Martin Schaefer, a postdoctoral researcher at the same department at Karolinska Institutet and the study’s first author.Why is this important? According to the researchers, it can be used in various clinical applications.“One potential application is new methods to diagnose or treat neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, where damage to pupil function is an early sign of the disease,” said Arshamian. “This is something we want to explore in the future.”The post Breathing and Vision May Be Linked—Here’s Why That Matters appeared first on VICE.