Man can change his pupil size on command

My LASIK experience could not have been more opposite. I remember walking in, then putting some type of clamp to keep my eyelids from closing, you look at a red dot or a couple dots, the doctor even says you can move your eyeballs around and the laser will follow it so don’t worry about it messing up the procedure.

Then the laser activates for 10 seconds or so, you smell your burning eyeball, laser does it again to your other eye. Whole procedure is done within a couple minutes.

You get half a Xanax, go home, go to sleep, and wake up with crystal clear vision like you have never seen before.

But I also watched myself get a vasectomy, so I might not be able to relate to what an anxious person might go through.

Edit: I forgot part of the procedure. The clamp that keeps your eyelids open also slices the top layer of your eyeball and flips it open for the laser to shape your cornea. The Xanax is prob to ensure you sleep and let it heal.

I am not sure how ground breaking this is.

Pupils accommodate. Focusing on something far will make your pupil get larger and focusing on something near will make it get smaller.

Basically every normal person’s pupil does this. My guess is that person in the article is actually just changing focus without really thinking about it. Given that changing focus activates muscles in the eyes, you might be convinced that you are actively controlling the muscles in the eyes directly, and not through changing focus. In addition, the “finding” of this article is based entirely on the persons subjective experience.

Thus I think the professor found someone who accomodates as normal, but has a subjective sensation of controlling his pupils when he changes his focus.

To nitpick, it is not as grand as mind-over-matter, but rather conscious control of things that are normally under the control of the sympathetic or parasympathetic system. IIRC the sympathetic system is more likely to be consciously influenced. Both are vital subsystems that control things like heart rate, blood pressure, etc. that you'd rather not play too much with (although it is said that you can with deep meditation).

Your question are about different things than that, and the first one is about a different thing than the second one.

Learning to move a particular muscle you don't normally use consciously (like moving your ears or your nostrils) is indeed a matter of practice. Sometimes all it takes is getting conscious that there is a muscle there, and then you improve your feedback loop between sending a command and feeling it move.

But a muscle that uncontrollably twitches is a whole different process. For instance some muscle cramps are related to dehydration or lack of certain minerals. So the cause can be more chemical than nervous system (ie coming from the nervous system).

PS: I have no particular expertise in this area.

Yes.

Look into practices of Tibetan monks and Indian Yogis. They specifically train their bodies to do extraordinary things.

One example is that they will meditate outside in near- or sub-freezing temperatures and have cold wet sheets placed on their skin, which they will heat and dry by controlling their metabolism (no shivering involved)[1]. I'd not be surprised to find that these studies and practices were an inspiration for Herbert's idea in Dune.

[1] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2002/04/meditation-ch...

I believe that would be one of the "indirect methods" that's known and described in the articles as "mental effort".

Apparently the person described in the article can do it without indirect methods, and also "feel" the muscles involved.

From what's described it's almost as natural as moving an arm for them.