Abstract
The pupil dilated asymmetrically when one side of the ciliary nerve was stimulated in cats (Miyagawa, 2013, ARVO). To investigate the changes of higher order aberration elicited by electrical stimulation of the ciliary nerve, we analyzed the wavefront aberrations with a compact Shack-Hartmann wavefrontaberrometer (Aston University and Topcon Corp.) before, during, and after the stimulation. Six eyes of six cats were studied under general anesthesia. Trains of monophasic pulse were applied to either the lateral branch (LB) or medial branch (MB) of the short ciliary nerve with hook-shaped bipolar stimulating electrodes. We measured the wavefront aberration for 2 seconds before, 8 seconds during, and for 20 seconds after the electrical stimulation. We performed the wavefront sensing over 6-mm pupil area when one side of the ciliary nerve was stimulated. Among four of astigmatism and coma terms in Zernike modes, only oblique astigmatism (OA) but not coma was statistically significantly different between the LB stimulation and the MB stimulation. The OA induced by the LB was −0.098 ± 0.086 (average ± SD) μm and OA induced by the MD was 0.086 ± 0.038 μm. This results suggested that the unilateral ciliary nerve stimulation induced asymmetrical contraction of the ciliary body and this caused distortion of the crystalline lens shape rather than shift of the lens.