Gagnon Lea, Ismaili Abd Rahman Alaoui, Ptito Maurice, Kupers Ron
School of Optometry, University of Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Brain Research and Integrative Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Neuroscience and Pharmacology, Panum Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Brain Research and Integrative Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Neuroscience and Pharmacology, Panum Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
PLoS One. 2015 Mar 30;10(3):e0122567. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0122567. eCollection 2015.
Sight is undoubtedly important for finding and appreciating food, and cooking. Blind individuals are strongly impaired in finding food, limiting the variety of flavours they are exposed to. We have shown before that compared to sighted controls, congenitally blind individuals have enhanced olfactory but reduced taste perception. In this study we tested the hypothesis that congenitally blind subjects have enhanced orthonasal but not retronasal olfactory skills. Twelve congenitally blind and 14 sighted control subjects, matched in age, gender and body mass index, were asked to identify odours using grocery-available food powders. Results showed that blind subjects were significantly faster and tended to be better at identifying odours presented orthonasally. This was not the case when odorants were presented retronasally. We also found a significant group x route interaction, showing that although both groups performed better for retronasally compared to orthonasally presented odours, this gain was less pronounced for blind subjects. Finally, our data revealed that blind subjects were more familiar with the orthonasal odorants and used the retronasal odorants less often for cooking than their sighted counterparts. These results confirm that orthonasal but not retronasal olfactory perception is enhanced in congenital blindness, a result that is concordant with the reduced food variety exposure in this group.
视觉对于寻找、品味食物以及烹饪无疑是至关重要的。盲人在寻找食物方面存在严重障碍，这限制了他们所能接触到的味道种类。我们之前已经表明，与视力正常的对照组相比，先天性盲人的嗅觉增强但味觉感知下降。在本研究中，我们测试了这样一个假设：先天性盲人的前鼻孔嗅觉技能增强，但后鼻孔嗅觉技能并未增强。我们让12名先天性盲人以及14名年龄、性别和体重指数相匹配的视力正常的对照受试者，使用杂货店可得的食物粉末来识别气味。结果显示，盲人受试者在前鼻孔呈现气味时识别速度明显更快，且往往表现得更好。当气味通过后鼻孔呈现时，情况并非如此。我们还发现了显著的组别×呈现途径交互作用，这表明尽管两组在识别后鼻孔呈现的气味时都比识别前鼻孔呈现的气味表现得更好，但盲人受试者的这种优势并不那么明显。最后，我们的数据显示，盲人受试者对前鼻孔气味更熟悉，并且在烹饪中使用后鼻孔气味的频率低于视力正常的受试者。这些结果证实，先天性盲人的前鼻孔嗅觉感知增强，而后鼻孔嗅觉感知并未增强，这一结果与该群体食物种类接触减少的情况相一致。
