Blinking is something we do without thinking, just like breathing.
Most of the time, we don’t even notice it happening.
For years, scientists have mainly studied blinking in relation to eye health.
But a study from Concordia University suggests blinking may also be tied to how the brain processes information.
Specifically, the research looks at how blinking changes when people are trying to understand speech in noisy environments.
The findings were published in the journal Trends in Hearing.
How Blinking Relates to Focus and Mental Effort
The researchers found that people blink less when they’re working harder to understand what someone is saying.
When speech becomes harder to follow, especially with background noise, blinking drops.
This appears to reflect increased mental effort and focus during everyday listening situations.
Interestingly, lighting made no difference. People blinked at similar rates whether the room was bright, dim or completely dark.
That suggests blinking changes are linked to brain activity, not visual conditions.
Why the Brain Suppresses Blinking
The research team wanted to know whether blinking is influenced by the environment or by higher level thinking.
The paper explains that blinking may be strategically timed so we don’t miss important information.
In other words, blinks aren’t random movements in the name of keeping dust out of the eyes.
The study found that people consistently blinked less when important information was being presented, suggesting the brain actively suppresses blinking at key moments.
How the Study Tracked Blink Behavior
Nearly 50 adults took part in the study.
Each participant sat in a soundproof room and focused on a fixed cross on a screen.
They listened to short spoken sentences through headphones while background noise levels changed.
Some listening conditions were easy, while others were much more challenging.
Participants wore eye-tracking glasses that recorded every blink and captured the exact timing of each one.
When Blinks Drop the Most
Researchers divided each listening session into three parts: before the sentence played, during the sentence and immediately after.
Blink rates dropped the most while the sentence was being spoken.
The reduction was strongest when background noise was loud and speech was hardest to understand.
Before and after the sentences, blink rates increased again.
Lighting Conditions Don’t Change the Pattern
In a second experiment, the researchers repeated the listening tasks under different lighting conditions.
Participants completed the tests in dark, medium and bright rooms while background noise levels changed.
The same blink suppression pattern appeared every time.
This confirmed that blinking changes were driven by mental effort, not lighting or eye strain.
What Blink Rates Can Reveal About the Brain
People naturally vary a lot in how often they blink. Some participants blinked as few as 10 times per minute, while others blinked up to 70 times per minute.
Despite these differences, the overall trend was clear and statistically meaningful.
In the past, many studies focused on pupil dilation to measure mental effort and treated blinks as interruptions to be removed.
This study took a different approach by analyzing blink timing directly.
Why Blinking May Protect Important Information
The study authors believe that blinking is associated with briefly losing both visual and auditory information.
That may explain why the brain suppresses blinking when important information is coming in.
The next step is to better understand exactly how much information is lost during a blink and when it happens.
Further research is already underway, and the findings suggest that eye blinking plays a bigger role in attention and focus than has been previously thought.
