Dynamic interactions between accommodation and convergence are velocity sensitive

Abstract

Aftereffects of accommodation and vergence occur following approximately 1 min of adaptation to lenses and prisms respectively. This observation can be interpreted to mean that accommodation and vergence responses have phasic and tonic components. We have examined the role that these proposed subcomponents play in mutual interactions between accommodation and vergence. Both accommodative vergence (AV) and vergence accommodation (VA) were unresponsive to low temporal frequency variations (less than 0.1 Hz) in defocus and disparity respectively. However, both AV and VA were responsive to higher temporal frequency stimuli (up to 0.5 Hz). When negative feedback to the stimulated system was cancelled electronically, both AV and VA become responsive to low temporal frequency stimuli. The ratio or gain of accommodative vergence/accommodation (AC/A) and vergence accommodation/vergence (CA/C) increased nonlinearly with stimulus amplitude. Vergence aftereffects resulted from stimulation of AV and accommodative aftereffects resulted from stimulation of VA. These results are interpreted to mean there could be a complementary relationship between the amplitude of the AC/A ratio and proposed tonic adaptation of accommodation, and between the amplitude of the CA/C ratio and proposed tonic adaptation of vergence. A low saturation limit or stimulus window for tonic adaptation may account for the amplitude dependent nonlinearities of the AC/A and CA/C ratios.