NEW DELHI, Dec 12: Blinking less in noisy setting could mean the brain is working harder to understand speech, according to a study, hinting that the act of blinking reflects mental effort exerted during everyday listening. Two experiments, described in a paper published in the journal Trends in Hearing, showed how blinking patterns changed in response to stimuli under differing conditions — changes in lighting did not appear to have an impact. Researchers from Concordia University in Canada monitored 50 adults in a soundproof room whose eyes were fixated on a cross on a screen. Blinks were recorded with timing as the participants listened to short sentences through headphones, while background noise varied from quiet to loud. Blinking rates consistently dropped while participants

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