Age-related changes of reaction time and p300 for low-contrast color stimuli: Effects of yellowing of the aging human lens

Abstract

We measured reaction time (RT), P300, and subjective evaluation for color Landolt-Cs with a gray color background presented on a CRT display. Seven young and 7 elderly subjects (mean ages: 21.6 and 68.4 years, respectively) participated, and the young subjects wore glasses with filters simulating spectral transmittance of an aging human lens as a test condition. The results for young subjects not wearing the filters showed that RT and P300 latency are constant among different test colors. In contrast, the results for elderly subjects showed that RT and P300 varied substantially depending upon the test colors and RT and P300 latency became longer than those of young subjects, particularly for gray and blue stimuli. In addition, the results for the young subjects with filters showed tendencies similar to those in elderly subjects. These results indicate that the yellowing of the human lens strongly influences reaction time and cognition time for color targets, suggesting that wearing the filters enables the young to simulate RT qualitatively as well as visibility of the elderly because both the simulated filter and the aging human lens modify the effective luminance, effective luminance contrast and effective color difference between the color target and the background on the retina. We also found that the reciprocal of RT and P300 latency could be expressed in a multiple regression model consisting of effective luminance, effective luminance contrast, effective color difference and age. Absolute values of RT and P300 latency in young subjects with filters, however, did not quantitatively coincide with those of the elderly subjects. There were differences of RT and P300 latency between the young with filters and the elderly, indicating that higher order age-related delay could be involved.