Review Article

Mechanism of accommodation: A review of theoretical propositions

Godwin O. Ovenseri-Ogbomo, Olalekan A. Oduntan
African Vision and Eye Health | Vol 74, No 1 | a28 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/aveh.v74i1.28 | © 2015 Godwin O. Ovenseri-Ogbomo, Olalekan A. Oduntan | This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 22 October 2014 | Published: 17 September 2015

About the author(s)

Godwin O. Ovenseri-Ogbomo, Department of Optometry, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa; Department of Optometry, University of Benin, Nigeria
Olalekan A. Oduntan, Department of Optometry, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Abstract

Accommodation is the process by which the human eye changes its focus to see objects at varying distances from the eye. For nearly 300 years, scientists have investigated and presented various views on the mechanism of accommodation. The purpose of this review is to present both the historical and contemporary theories that underpin the process of accommodation. Keywords such as ocular accommodation, mechanism of accommodation and accommodative mechanism were used to retrieve published material on the subject. Classical propositions by Thomas Young and Hermann von Helmholtz, amongst others, are presented.

Keywords

accommodation; mechanism; amplitude of accommodation; Helmholtz

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