Temporal color contrast guides emmetropization in chick

As a result of longitudinal chromatic aberration (LCA), longer wavelengths are blurred when shorter wavelengths are in focus, and vice versa. As a result, LCA affects the color and temporal aspects of the retinal image with hyperopic defocus. In this experiment, we investigated how the sensitivity to temporal color contrast affects emmetropization. Ten-day-old chicks were exposed for three days to sinusoidal color modulation. The modulation was either blue/yellow flicker (BY) (n = 57) or red/green flicker (RG) (n = 60) simulating hyperopic defocus with and without a blue light component. The color contrasts tested were 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.6, and 0.8 Michelson contrast. The mean illuminance of all stimuli was 680 lux. Temporal modulation was either of a high (10 Hz) or low (0.2 Hz) temporal frequency. To test the role of short- and double-cone stimulation, an additional condition silenced these cones in RG_0.4 (D-) and was compared with RG_0.4 (D+) (n = 14). Changes in ocular components and refractive error were measured using Lenstar and a photorefractometer. With high temporal frequency BY representing an in-focus condition for shorter-wavelengths, we found that high temporal frequency BY contrast was positively correlated with vitreous expansion (R2 = 0.87, p