When do people blink

There's more to blinking than meets the eye. Share on Pinterest Blinking may play more of a role in our lives than one might think. The conversational blink. The importance of blinking. Latest news Scientists identify new cause of vascular injury in type 2 diabetes. Adolescent depression: Could school screening help? Related Coverage. What is psychology and what does it involve? Medically reviewed by Timothy J. Legg, Ph. What is Tourette's syndrome?

They found that, when blinking, there was an increase in brain activity. This is most likely the brain taking a momentary pause to process the information that was just gathered. We know that the average person blinks 15 to 20 times a minute. But we also have to factor in the amount of sleep people get, but why?

The average American gets about 6. This means that the average person blinks between 15, and 20, times a day. How many times do you blink in a year? The average person blinks between 5,, and 7,, times a year. How many times do you blink in your lifetime? Currently, the average lifespan of the average American is Since we know how many times we blink in a year we can say that the average American blinks between ,, and ,, times in their entire life. The average of those 2 numbers is ,, We know that blinks last on average about a tenth of a second.

And now we also know that a person blinks about ,, times in their entire life. Below is a list of how long our we spend our lives blinking in a lifetime. Their analysis showed that when the Bean-watchers blinked, mental activity briefly spiked in areas related to the default network , areas of the brain that operate when the mind is in a state of wakeful rest, rather than focusing on the outside world.

Momentary activation of this alternate network, they theorize, could serve as a mental break, allowing for increased attention capacity when the eyes are opened again. Blinking is something more than temporarily not seeing anything.

A blink could provide a momentary island of introspective calm in the ocean of visual stimuli that defines our lives. Newsletter image courtesy of Flickr user Chris McClanahan.

Your tear film and tears are made of water, oil, and mucus and hundreds of other components such as lysosomes, which function like natural antibiotics.

The tear film also contains many nutrients and amino acids to nourish the cells in the cornea , the clear, dome-like structure on the front of the eye. Besides keeping your eyes lubricated, tear film also:. Your eyelids play a significant role here. Aside from protecting your eye and keeping things dark while you sleep, they contain several glands that secrete the components of your tears when you blink.

There is also a slight horizontal movement of the eyelid that pushes debris toward the puncta tear ducts , small openings in the corners of the eyes through which tears drain. Tears then flush the debris. While these reasons for blinking are well-established, research also suggests that you may blink for your brain. Scientists speculate that blinks are a way to get a brief mental rest without visual stimuli. One study found that the precise moments we blink may not be random.

We may blink at very predictable times, in fact. For example, when reading, most people blink at the end of a sentence. When people listen to a speech, they tend to blink when the speaker pauses between statements. And when people watch a video, they tend to blink when the action on the video lags for a moment.