Flohr E L R, Arshamian A, Wieser M J, Hummel C, Larsson M, Mühlberger A, Hummel T
Smell and Taste Clinic, University of Dresden Medical School, Dresden, Germany; Department of Psychology (Biological Psychology, Clinical Psychology, and Psychotherapy), University of Würzburg, Germany.
Gösta Ekman Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Sweden.
Neuroscience. 2014 May 30;268:118-27. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2014.03.018. Epub 2014 Mar 20.
Cerebral activations during olfactory mental imagery are fairly well investigated in healthy participants but little attention has been given to olfactory imagery in patients with olfactory loss. To explore whether olfactory loss leads to deficits in olfactory imagery, neural responses using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and self-report measures were investigated in 16 participants with acquired olfactory loss and 19 control participants. Participants imagined both pleasant and unpleasant odors and their visual representations. Patients reported less vivid olfactory but not visual images than controls. Results from neuroimaging revealed that activation patterns differed between patients and controls. While the control group showed stronger activation in olfactory brain regions for unpleasant compared to pleasant odors, the patient group did not. Also, activation in critical areas for olfactory imagery was correlated with the duration of olfactory dysfunction, indicating that the longer the duration of dysfunction, the more the attentional resources were employed. This indicates that participants with olfactory loss have difficulties to perform olfactory imagery in the conventional way. Regular exposure to olfactory information may be necessary to maintain an olfactory imagery capacity.
在健康参与者中，嗅觉心理意象期间的大脑激活情况已得到相当充分的研究，但嗅觉丧失患者的嗅觉意象却很少受到关注。为了探究嗅觉丧失是否会导致嗅觉意象缺陷，我们对16名获得性嗅觉丧失参与者和19名对照参与者进行了功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）神经反应和自我报告测量研究。参与者想象了愉悦和不愉悦的气味及其视觉表象。与对照组相比，患者报告的嗅觉意象不如视觉意象生动。神经影像学结果显示，患者和对照组的激活模式不同。对照组在嗅觉脑区中，对不愉悦气味的激活比对愉悦气味更强，而患者组则不然。此外，嗅觉意象关键区域的激活与嗅觉功能障碍的持续时间相关，这表明功能障碍持续时间越长，所使用的注意力资源就越多。这表明嗅觉丧失的参与者难以以传统方式进行嗅觉意象。定期接触嗅觉信息可能是维持嗅觉意象能力所必需的。
