title: Spatiotemporal contrast sensitivity and colour vision in multiple sclerosis.
abstract: Measures of contrast sensitivity and colour vision were taken from a group of 18 multiple sclerosis patients. Contrast sensitivity losses, measured at 5 spatial frequencies and 4 temporal frequencies, were found to be significant in 11 patients. Red/green (Rayleigh equation) and green/blue (Engelking-Trendelenburg equation) Pickford-Nicolson anomaloscope settings were abnormal in 15 patients. Correlating each of the 20 spatiotemporal losses with the colour losses revealed that in 19 conditions the red/green loss was greater than the green/blue loss. None of the green/blue losses correlated significantly with spatiotemporal losses while between 2 and 8 cycles/deg 11/12 spatiotemporal conditions showed significant correlations with red/green colour loss. These results support a locus of damage before the cortex at a stage in the visual pathway where red/green chromatic information may be encoded in pathways which also code luminance information.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of York, Heslington, UK.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Travis
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Thompson
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003118:Color Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D015350:Contrast Sensitivity / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009103:Multiple Sclerosis / Q000503:physiopathology*; D009900:Optic Nerve / Q000503:physiopathology; D014787:Vision Tests / Q000379:methods; D014795:Visual Pathways / Q000503:physiopathology