Pupils Won't Shrink With Light

[2007]

[Attendee]

Like, what exactly they are, how it would affect you in your everyday behaviors, if you have some shut off. Can you explain like what the drive is?

[Aajonus]

When I do the irises, pupils that don't shrink when I shine the light in their eye, that's a sign that they have certain lanes of their brain closed.

That doesn't mean that a whole area or cognitive center or motor center is shut down. That just means there's a limited passage of information going in and out. So, when I look at each pupil, I say that there's six lanes into that particular half of their brain. Six lanes into the other half. So, there's 12 lanes together, and depending upon how much that pupil will shrink, that tells me how much of the brain is open and available. If you shine a light in the eye and that pupil doesn't shrink. That means that brain is not open very much because it's not getting the light.

If it gets the light, if it's all getting the light that pupil's going to shrink and limit the amount of light that gets into that brain, but it doesn't make anything cognitively worse for most people.