Tonic accommodation, cognitive demand, and ciliary muscle innervation.

An infrared optometer was used to investigate the relation between cognitive induced shifts in tonic accommodation (TA) and ciliary muscle innervation. Twenty emmetropic men volunteers took part in a double-masked protocol which involved high (a reverse counting task) and low levels of mental load and blocking of sympathetic innervation of the ciliary muscle with the nonselective beta receptor antagonist timolol maleate (0.5%). The high level of cognitive demand induced shifts in TA of up to +1 D. There was no clear reason why large differences in intersubject susceptibility to these shifts occurred. The effect of beta-antagonism on these shifts was insignificant for subjects having initial TA values less than 1.2 D. However, sympathetic antagonism induced significant increases in cognitive shifts for the remaining subjects. The inference is that cognitive induced shifts in TA are predominantly parasympathetic mediated although a sympathetic attenuation may occur at higher levels of TA.