Carlo Allegri / Reuters file

Brown-eyed faces, like Hugh Jackman's, are perceived as more trustworthy, a new study has found.

Gazing into people’s eyes can offer insight into whether they can be trusted, and according to new research, this perception may have something to do with eye color.

A study published in the journal PLOS ONE found that brown-eyed people are believed to be more trustworthy than blue-eyed people.

Does that mean that you can trust well-known brown-eyed girls (and boys) like Hugh Jackman and Sandra Bullock more than Jude Law and Reese Witherspoon?

Not exactly, since eye color doesn’t paint the whole picture of what trustworthiness looks like. 

“It is not eye color, but face shape associated with eye color that causes the higher perception of trustworthiness,” wrote lead study author Karel Kleisner of Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, in an email to NBCNews.com.  “

Kleisner and his colleagues asked more than 200 students to rate how much they could trust a series of 80 male and female faces with either brown or blue eyes. 

Subjects rated the brown-eyed faces as being more trustworthy, but that wasn’t the end of the story. 

To demonstrate that eye color isn’t the final answer when it comes to trustworthiness, the researchers then asked a second group of students to rate the same faces, but with the eye colors digitally switched.

Torsten Laursen / Getty Images file

Sorry, Jude Law, but there's just something about those baby blues we don't entirely trust.

The faces rated the most trustworthy by the first group received similar ratings from the second group, even though the eyes were now different colors.  The authors surmised that some other characteristic must play a role. 

In general, faces judged as more trustworthy are narrower, have bigger eyes, and broader mouths with upward-oriented lips.   Kleisner explained that these are characteristics associated with brown eyes.

On the other hand, blue eyes tend to be smaller, meaning many blue-eyed faces are pointier and longer with eyebrows that are far apart.

Favoring those big, brown, puppy-dog eyes may have some social implications, Kleisner explained.

“This may further lead to social stereotypes that affect a broad range of social situations from mate choice and business partner selection to political marketing and democratic processes,” he wrote. 

But despite being viewed as less trustworthy, blue-eyed individuals may have something working in their favor – at least in Northern Europe.

Blue eyes, the authors explained, are very common throughout that part of the world, most likely because they are considered more attractive.   The preference for blue eyes, they added, makes up for the perceived lack of trustworthiness. 

Kleisner added that the research needs to be replicated using different photos and different subjects, and he cautioned against over-interpreting the significance of the findings. 

So don't look too deeply into those puppy dog eyes just yet.

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Christopher Polk / Getty Images

Call it the great one-day (we hope) lazy eye panic.

It started, apparently, with a story in the Australian tabloid Daily Telegraph, which quoted an Aussie eye doctor as indicting the hair-over-one-eye hairstyles of Cameron Diaz and Nicole Richie (those of us into old movies prefer Veronica Lake), and countless emo boys and girls, as causing lazy eye, or amblyopia.   

Then the story made its way to The Huffington Post. By the time msnbc.com contacted Dr. Leonard Press, the New Jersey eye specialist who co-authored the clinical practice guidelines on amblyopia for the American Optometric Association, the assistant who picked up the phone said “You mean the hair-over-the-eyes thing?”

Press could barely suppress a chuckle.

Amblyopia, a condition of reduced vision in which the brain does not recognize some or all of the information the eye sees, is indeed a serious eye problem, he said, and one of the reasons it’s serious is that, if left untreated in children younger than 7 years old, a very concerted, sometimes difficult, effort has to be made to correct the lazy eye. That’s because after about age 7, the neural and optical mechanisms involved have been well established, and changing them is tough going.

That’s exactly the reason why Nicole Richie is safe.

“The story would only be true,” he explained, “if you had somebody young enough, and if that person never looked out of that eye -- if it was blocked 24-7. The reason it’s false is that you don’t have that constant deprivation.”

The visual system, Press said, “is so well-established” after childhood, that “combing your hair over your eye will not do anything to that system.”

So don’t worry all you emo boys and girls. By the time mother and father give in to whatever hairstyle you want, any eye problems won’t be the result of your comb-over. Laser lights, well, that could be another story.

Brian Alexander (www.BrianRAlexander.com) is co-author, with Larry Young, PhD., of "The Chemistry Between Us: Love Sex and the Science of Attraction," (www.TheChemistryBetweenUs.com)  to be published Sept. 13.

Related: 

• Can eating too much make your stomach burst?
• Fact check: Do leggings really make you fat?
• Myth, busted: You only use 10 percent of your brain

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

featurepics.com

The head of a California medical company says he has developed the technology to turn your pretty brown eyes into deep baby blues, like Elijah Wood's.

Gregg Homer, PhD, of Stroma Medical Corporation in Laguna Beach, Calif., says this is possible because everybody has blue eyes already. You just can’t see them. 

“Anyone who has brown eyes has blue eyes underneath,” he says, “and it’s covered by a thin layer of pigment. We’ve developed a laser that can be fired straight through the clear part of the eye, the cornea, and it disrupts the pigment so it initiates a process in the body that digests the pigment and it removes it from the eye.”

The procedure can be done in only about 20 seconds while a person sits down, stares into a tiny animated screen while the other eye is covered. When the alternate eye looks into the animated screen, the process is complete.

The eyes don’t turn blue instantly, though. In fact, they get darker for the first week. They begin turning blue in two weeks, and within four weeks, both eyes are blue.

Homer, Chairman of the Board and Chief Medical Officer of the company, says since he was recently interviewed on a Los Angeles television station, he’s gotten nearly 3,000 requests for the procedure.

But people who want it will have to remain patient, because it won’t be available in the United States for about another three years, and about 18 months in Europe and other parts of the world. It’s expected to cost about $5,000.

“I’m incredibly excited about it,” Homer says. “I have light eyes and I think brown eyes are just as beautiful as blue eyes. But I started doing this because I thought it was a cool technology and I thought it would be nice for people to have a choice. I’m glad other people think it’s cool, too.”

Once you turn your brown eyes blue, you can’t change them back, Homer says.

Scientists from the University of Copenhagen reported that originally, we all had brown eyes until a gene mutation occurring between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago led to blue eyes.

“It’s true that brown eyes are covering up blue eyes underneath,” says Dr. Brian S. Boxer Wachler, an ophthalmologist and director of the Boxer Wachler Vision Institute in Beverly Hills, Calif. “It’s an intriguing concept, but what I’m not sure about is the safety and that’s the big question mark on this technology.”

Boxer Wachler says that cases of eye trauma and inflammation also can disrupt pigment on the iris and cause patches of blue to show through. He says before he would use it, he would have to see studies to show it doesn’t cause increased chances of glaucoma or cataracts because of damage to the eyes’ natural lenses.

If it really works and is safe, Boxer Wachler believes -- judging from the hundreds of people pay $7,000 for an eye-brightening procedure he pioneered -- there will be lots of takers.

“They’re already getting their teeth whitened and if this procedure works, we’ll have the irises lightened in the color of the eyes. We are moving in this direction of changing the appearance of the eyes.”

Related:

• Blue-eyed ballplayer blames batting woes on his peepers
• 'Cat eye syndrome' makes eyes look feline
• The truth behind eye boogers (ew)

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Some of the evidence of a night's sleep are visible when you lift your head off the pillow -- bed head, morning breath, dried-up drool, and eye boogers.

And while the cause of most of these sleep remnants is fairly obvious, the reason behind those sometimes-sticky, sometimes-crusty gobs of crud that can dot the lashes or cling to the corners of the eye is less clear. Why do our peepers churn out this gunk at night and what's in the stuff? For answers to these important questions, Body Odd turned to an eye expert.

"The general consensus is that this debris is the stuff leftover from dried out tears," says Dr. Sherleen Chen, director of the cataract and comprehensive ophthalmology service at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston.

Tears are made up of water, protein, oils, and a mucous layer known as mucin, which typically coat the surface of the eye to moisten and protect it from viruses and bacteria.

But when your eyes are closed and your eyelids are not blinking, dirt and debris within the eye isn't continually washed over by tears, which would help to dilute them. So at night, dryness causes the stuff in tears to precipitate out, explains Chen. Then the crud collects toward the inside corner of the eye, where tears usually end up.

Eye boogers can also accumulate on the outer corners of the eye or anywhere along the lash.

Throughout her years of medical training and specializing in ophthalmology, Chen says she's yet to come across a technical term for "eye boogers," so she simply refers to it as "mattering." But in everyday conversation, it may go by the name "sleepy sand," "eye goop," "sleep," or "sleep dust."

There's also the question of its consistency -- sometimes "eye boogers" are wet and sticky and other times they're dry and sandy. Does this depend on how long they've sat there or how much sleep you've gotten?

Chen says the texture is a function of a person's tear film. The crud is crumbly in people whose eyes tend to be dry --  their peepers have more solids and not enough liquid.

Folks who have more allergies, tend to have more mucous, which gives eye crud a wetter, gunkier quality to it.

People who wear contacts are prone to forming more "sleepy sand" because the lenses

irritate the surface of the eye, so it produces more mucous to protect itself. People who have allergies affecting their eyes or who rub them a lot, such as small children, may also have more eye crud.

If the indoor air is dry, you may also wake up with more "sleep dust." Although not an attractive look first thing in the morning, the stuff is basically harmless.

Chen says the best way to clear eye boogers is to lay a hot washcloth on the lid and lashes for a minute or two, then gently clean them off.

What do you call "eye boogers?" Ever had a particularly bad case of 'em?

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Over a two-year period, Toby Spencer traipsed from doctor to doctor describing his weird collection of symptoms -- all of them involving his left ear.

"One of the first, and probably most disturbing symptoms I had was hearing my left eye movements in my head," says Spencer. "In a quiet room it was so distracting that I would often resort to running a fan or some other white noise to attempt to mask it.

"My voice and breathing were also very magnified in that ear," he explains.

Courtesy of Toby Spencer

Toby Spencer, who's 41 and lives in Skowhegan, Maine, had a strange condition that caused him to, among other things, hear his own eyeball move.

There were other strange signs: "If I turned my head too quickly, especially to the left, I felt like I was falling sideways," Spencer recalls. "Loud noises would also make me feel like I was losing my balance."

The doctors he saw offered various explanations for his hearing and balance problems: From tumors and aneurysms to a jaw disorder or a lack of equilibrium in his blood pressure.

But it wasn't until Spencer, a 41-year-old IT professional from Skowhegan, Maine, stumbled upon an online forum in which a person was describing almost his exact same symptoms that he learned about a rare condition known as superior canal dehiscence syndrome.

Dehiscence (pronounced dee-hiss-ence) is a fancy word for an opening or a hole. As he eventually learned from specialists in this disorder, Spencer's symptoms were caused by a small hole -- often not much larger than a pinhead -- in the bone covering the superior semicircular canal in the inner ear.

Discovered in 1998 by Dr. Lloyd Minor, a physician from Johns Hopkins, superior canal dehiscence syndrome (SCDS) can cause hearing difficulties, balance issues, or both.

One of the more unusual and bizarre complaints described by those with SCDS is hearing their eyeballs moving in their sockets, which supposedly sounds like sandpaper rubbing on wood. (Last week, the BBC ran an article about a British man with SCDS, who like Spencer, also described feeling his eyeballs moving.)

"What makes this condition very interesting and its symptoms sometimes difficult to believe is how a tiny hole [in an inner ear bone] can cause so many problems," says Dr. Daniel Lee, an ear and skull base surgeon at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston, who specializes in SCDS and treated Spencer for it.

The tiny hole is caused by a thinning of the bones of the head and people are likely born this way, suggests Lee. This opening causes balance canals in the inner ear to be abnormally activated, and they respond to loud sounds and to pressure in the ear.

Besides the peculiar symptom of hearing your own eye movements, Lee says his patients also report hearing other noises unusually loud through the affected ear or ears. This may include the crunching sound of their own footsteps, their heart beating, the echo of their own speaking voice, or disturbingly loud reverberations when brushing their hair or shaving.

Sufferers may complain of dizziness or their eyes bouncing up and down from a loud noise, or feeling as if their ear is blocked.

Surgery is not needed simply because there is a teeny hole in the inner ear and the majority of patients do nothing at all after they are diagnosed, explains Lee.

But in April, Spencer had an operation -- a middle fossa craniotomy to plug the hole -- because he felt his symptoms were degrading his quality of life.

"My biggest nightmare was going two years without knowing what was wrong with me," admits Spencer. Now that his symptoms are gone, he "feels great, has more energy, and can enjoy things more."

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.