Dynamic accommodation with simulated targets blurred with high order aberrations

High order aberrations have been suggested to play a role in determining the direction of accommodation. We have explored the effect of retinal blur induced by high order aberrations on dynamic accommodation by measuring the accommodative response to sinusoidal variations in accommodative demand (1-3D). The targets were blurred with 0.3 and 1mum (for a 3-mm pupil) of defocus, coma, trefoil and spherical aberration. Accommodative gain decreased significantly when 1-mum of aberration was induced. We found a strong correlation between the relative accommodative gain (and phase lag) and the contrast degradation imposed on the target at relevant spatial frequencies.