Elderly people tend to perceive color as more yellowish than younger people do, and their ability to discriminate between blueish colors deteriorates as they grow older. This paper describes measurements of visual chromatic spatial and temporal frequency responses in subjects aged 60 to 75 years old to gain a better understanding of age-related changes in color perception and to clarify some differences between young and elderly people. We found that visual chromatic spatial and temporal frequency responses to ayellow-blue (dominant wavelength : 565-445 nm) stimulus were significantly reduced in comparison with those to a red-green (495 nm and its conjugate) stimulus. The results suggest that weakened optical functions in the eye and in the power to send visual signals from the retina to the nervous system are likely causes of this deterioration of color -contrast sensitivity.
