Aging Effects of Gaze Shifts in Depth

Abstract

Changes in binocular eye movement occur when a subject changes his/her gaze point from a far/near to a near/far target, requiring both symmetric and asymmetric vergence. We measured these changes to investigate the effects of aging on vergence eye movement. Results indicated increases in the latency and time constants of vergence eye movement, decreases in convergence angle changes, and increases in the number of corrective saccades in subjects over 50 years, and increases in time constants in subjects below 10 years, compared with data for subjects between 10 and 50 years. This suggests that young and older subjects do not have the same vergence eye movement characteristics as those between 10 and 50 years. These differences should be considered in research about a subject's depth perception of stereoscopic images.