Odor identification: The blind are better

doi:10.1016/0031-9384(86)90402-6

Physiology & Behavior

Volume 37, Issue 1, 1986, Pages 177-180

https://doi.org/10.1016/0031-9384(86)90402-6 Get rights and content

Abstract

Twenty sighted and twenty blind adults, 19 to 66 years of age, participated in tests of olfactory sensitivity to n-butyl alcohol and of identification of 80 everyday odors. The blind had poorer absolute sensitivity, but outperformed the sighted at identification. Age proved an important factor in the comparison; more than half the variance in identification within each group was ascribable to an age-related decline.

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In recent decades, numerous structural brain imaging studies investigated purported morphometric changes in early (EB) and late onset blindness (LB). The results of these studies have not yielded very consistent results, neither with respect to the type, nor to the anatomical locations of the brain morphometric alterations. To better characterize the effects of blindness on brain morphometry, we performed a systematic review and an Anatomical-Likelihood-Estimation (ALE) coordinate-based-meta-analysis of 65 eligible studies on brain structural changes in EB and LB, including 890 EB, 466 LB and 1257 sighted controls. Results revealed atrophic changes throughout the whole extent of the retino-geniculo-striate system in both EB and LB, whereas changes in areas beyond the occipital lobe occurred in EB only. We discuss the nature of some of the contradictory findings with respect to the used brain imaging methodologies and characteristics of the blind populations such as the onset, duration and cause of blindness. Future studies should aim for much larger sample sizes, eventually by merging data from different brain imaging centers using the same imaging sequences, opt for multimodal structural brain imaging, and go beyond a purely structural approach by combining functional with structural connectivity network analyses.
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Consistently, these studies found increased orthonasal olfactory sensitivity among blind compared to sighted individuals (cf. Gagnon, Kupers, et al., 2014). Such sensory compensatory phenomena have been observed when measuring odour awareness (Beaulieu-Lefebvre, Schneider, Kupers, & Ptito, 2011), olfactory detection threshold (Beaulieu-Lefebvre et al., 2011; Cuevas et al., 2010), discrimination (Cuevas et al., 2010; Cuevas, Plaza, Rombaux, De Volder, & Renier, 2009), identification of daily life odours (Cuevas et al., 2009; Murphy & Cain, 1986; Wakefield, Homewood, & Taylor, 2004) and odour localisation (Manescu, Chouinard-Leclaire, Collignon, Lepore, & Frasnelli, 2021). Supporting these empirical findings, Kupers et al. (2011) showed that specific zones of the occipital cortex were recruited for orthonasal olfactory processes in individuals with congenital blindness.
Understanding how human senses are linked to eating behaviour and adiposity has been a key topic in sensory science, and a source of substantial controversy. Despite strong correlations in sensitivity across different sensory modalities, the fundamental question of whether individuals possess a ‘generalised sensitivity’ across senses remains unanswered. A better understanding of the relationships between multiple senses and eating behaviour is needed to tackle the current obesity epidemic. The present study synthesises published data regarding sensory sensitivities across modalities and presents new empirical findings. Specifically, we synthesise findings from 115 publications, including meta-analyses of 26 studies. These data reveal strong yet complex links between senses, highlighting the potential of multi-sensory analyses to better characterise sensory variations. In the empirical study, 98 Caucasian males (25.9 ± 5.8 years of age; body mass index: 26.8 ± 5.1 kg∙m⁻²) are tested for their supra-threshold sensory sensitivities (d′) to 11 food-related mono-modal stimuli across olfaction, gustation, vision, and audition. Canonical correlations on d′ for each modality reveal significant positive correlations between olfaction and gustation (p < 0.001), vision and audition (p < 0.001), as well as olfaction and audition (p = 0.008). Additionally, K-means cluster analysis identifies three broad groups of individuals with distinct multi-sensory fingerprints. Intriguingly, individuals in separate clusters are shown to have significantly different adiposity measures (body mass index: p = 0.01; body fat percentages: p = 0.05). Overall, this study sheds important new light on multi-sensory ‘fingerprints’, and their links to obesity.
No Olfactory Compensation in Food-related Hazard Detection Among Blind and Deaf Adults: A Psychophysical Approach
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Possibly, enhancement of olfactory function follows sensory loss only in some groups of sensory-deprived subjects (e.g., Beaulieu-Lefebvre et al., 2011; Çomoğlu et al., 2015; Cuevas et al., 2010), and not in all blind/deaf people. Further, there is no specific perceptual task in which the compensatory effects are consistently reported, and some studies report even lower olfactory function in deaf (Diekmann et al., 1994; Guducu et al., 2016) or blind individuals (Murphy and Cain, 1986; Sorokowska, 2016). Still – it is also possible that we did not observe olfactory compensation because food-related hazard detection is relevant for everyone (Stevenson, 2010).
The exposure-driven olfactory compensation associated with sensory loss is likely to be observed in assessment of food-related dangers. Therefore, in the current study we tested the hypothesis that olfactory compensation occurs in the case of protection from food-related hazards. We compared thresholds for detection of an unpleasant rotten food odor (fermented fish sauce) in four groups of subjects: blind subjects (n = 100), sighted controls (n = 100), deaf subjects (n = 74) and hearing controls (n = 99). Overall, we observed no significant differences in smell acuity between the blind and deaf groups and their matched control samples. However, the sensory deprived subjects assessed their sensitivity as higher than did control groups. The present study is yet another example of research among large samples of sensory deprived individuals that shows no evidence of olfactory compensation. This result is consistent with a growing number of studies suggesting no sensory compensation in simple, absolute sensitivity tasks.
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Under the assumption that blind persons may rely more on odors than sighted persons and that they may be more “trained,” numerous studies have compared olfactory test scores of blind persons to those of sighted individuals. Most have observed no differences between the blind and the sighted (e.g., Schaefer et al., 1979; Diekmann et al., 1994; Schwenn et al., 2002; Cuevas et al., 2011; Luers et al., 2014; Kaya and Binar, 2016; Sorokowska and Karwowski, 2017), although exceptions exist (Murphy and Cain, 1986; Rombaux et al., 2010; Beaulieu-Lefebvre et al., 2011; Comoglu et al., 2015) (for reviews, see Smith et al., 1993; Sorokowska and Karwowski, 2017). The impact of training is evident in a study that found trained panel members of a water department to outperform both blind and sighted subjects on a variety of olfactory tests, including the UPSIT, a detection threshold test, and a 16-item discrimination test (Smith et al., 1993).
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Indeed, in the case of a forced-choice paradigm, the consensus is that blindness does not affect the performance (Smith et al., 1993; Rosenbluth et al., 2000; Schwenn et al., 2002; Cuevas et al., 2010; Beaulieu-Lefebvre et al., 2011; Luers et al., 2014; Comoglu et al., 2015; Gagnon et al., 2015; Sorokowska, 2016). However, in the case of a free naming identification task, several studies suggest that blind individuals outperform the sighted (Murphy and Cain, 1986; Rosenbluth et al., 2000; Wakefield et al., 2004; Cuevas et al., 2010; Rombaux et al., 2010; Renier et al., 2013; Gagnon et al., 2015), while only one team did not find significant results (Sorokowska, 2016; Sorokowska and Karwowski, 2017). Some authors have suggested that the heightened performance of blind individuals in free odor identification may be explainable by a greater ability for blind individuals to generate words (Burton et al., 2002), rather than from genuine increased olfactory ability.
Blind individuals display superior sensory abilities in other modalities, yet results remain contradictory regarding their performance on olfactory tasks. Using complex ecological olfactory tasks, we evaluated the impact of blindness on olfactory performance. We tested 12 early-blind individuals (M = 49, SD = 13.09) and 12 sighted controls (M = 49, SD = 14.31) who were all blindfolded. Based solely on the wine odors, participants evaluated 24 pairs of wine and determined if both samples belonged to the same category (red wine, white wine, or rosé wine) or not (odor categorization), and if so, whether they were identical or not (odor differentiation). Then, they had to classify 15 different wines (5 red, 5 white and 5 rosé) into red, white, and rosé wines (odor classification). Blind individuals (d′: M = 1.3, SD = 1.2) presented lower scores compared to sighted controls (M = 2.2 SD = 0.8; p < .05) in the odor categorization task, but no group difference was observed for the other tasks. For all participants, red wine odors were the easiest to classify (1.8 ± 1.0), followed by white wine odors (0.5 ± 0.6) and finally rosé wine odors (blind and sighted; F[2; 44] = 11.9, p < .001). In summary, early-blind individuals had a harder time to categorize wine odors. This could be explained by a different construction of internal reference categories for wine in early-blind individuals. Finally, this research is in line with the notion of the absence of higher olfactory sensitivity in blind individuals.

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Brief communicationOdor identification: The blind are better

Abstract

Bollettinn Malattie Orecchio, Gola, Naso

Ricerche sulla soglia olfattiva nei ciechi

Bollettinn Malattie Orecchil, Gola, Naso

To know with the nose: Keys to odor identification

Science

Odor identification by males and females: Predictions vs. performance

Chem Senses

Clinical evaluation of olfaction

Am J Otolaryngol

Brief communication
Odor identification: The blind are better