Short-term adaptation of accommodation, accommodative vergence and disparity vergence facility

Abstract

Previous studies have found that subjects can increase the velocity of accommodation using visual exercises such as pencil push ups, flippers, Brock strings and the like and myriad papers have shown improvement in accommodation facility (speed) and sufficiency (amplitude) using subjective tests following vision training but few have objectively measured accommodation before and after training in either normal subjects or in patients diagnosed with accommodative infacility (abnormally slow dynamics). Accommodation is driven either directly by blur or indirectly by way of neural crosslinks from the vergence system. Until now, no study has objectively measured both accommodation and accommodative–vergence before and after vision training and the role vergence might play in modifying the speed of accommodation. In the present study, accommodation and accommodative–vergence were measured with a Purkinje Eye Tracker/optometer before and after normal subjects trained in a flipper-like task in which the stimulus stepped between 0 and 2.5diopters and back for over 200 cycles. Most subjects increased their speed of accommodation as well as their speed of accommodative vergence. Accommodative vergence led the accommodation response by approximately 77ms before training and 100ms after training and the vergence lead was most prominent in subjects with high accommodation and vergence velocities and the vergence leads tended to increase in conjunction with increases in accommodation velocity. We surmise that volitional vergence may help increase accommodation velocity by way of vergence–accommodation cross links.