Aguillon-Hernandez Nadia, Naudin Marine, Roché Laëtitia, Bonnet-Brilhault Frédérique, Belzung Catherine, Martineau Joëlle, Atanasova Boriana
Team 1 "Autism," UMR INSERM U 930, Université François Rabelais de Tours, Tours, France.
Team 4 "Affective Disorders," UMR INSERM U 930, Université François Rabelais de Tours, Tours, France.
Int J Psychophysiol. 2015 Jun;96(3):201-9. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2015.03.009. Epub 2015 Mar 31.
Olfactory disorders constitute a potential marker of many diseases and are considered valuable clues to the diagnosis and evaluation of progression for many disorders. The most commonly used test for the evaluation of impairments of olfactory identification requires the active participation of the subject, who must select the correct name of the perceived odor from a list. An alternative method is required because speech may be impaired or not yet learned in many patients. As odor identification is known to be facilitated by searching for visual clues, we aimed to develop an objective, vision-based approach for the evaluation of odor identification. We used an eye tracking method to quantify pupillary and ocular responses during the simultaneous presentation of olfactory and visual stimuli, in 39 healthy participants aged from 19 to 77years. Odor presentation triggered an increase in pupil dilation and gaze focus on the picture corresponding to the odor presented. These results suggest that odorant stimuli increase recruitment of the sympathetic system (as demonstrated by the reactivity of the pupil) and draw attention to the visual clue. These results validate the objectivity of this method.
嗅觉障碍是许多疾病的潜在标志，被视为多种病症诊断和病情进展评估的重要线索。评估嗅觉识别障碍最常用的测试需要受试者积极参与，即从列表中选择所闻到气味的正确名称。由于许多患者可能存在言语障碍或尚未学会说话，因此需要一种替代方法。鉴于已知通过寻找视觉线索有助于气味识别，我们旨在开发一种基于视觉的客观方法来评估气味识别。我们采用眼动追踪方法，对39名年龄在19至77岁的健康参与者在同时呈现嗅觉和视觉刺激时的瞳孔和眼部反应进行量化。气味呈现引发瞳孔扩张增加，并使注视焦点集中在与所呈现气味相对应的图片上。这些结果表明，气味刺激增加了交感神经系统的活动（如瞳孔反应所示），并将注意力吸引到视觉线索上。这些结果验证了该方法的客观性。
