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. 2021 Jan 1:46:bjaa073.
doi: 10.1093/chemse/bjaa073.

Enhanced Odorant Localization Abilities in Congenitally Blind but not in Late-Blind Individuals

Simona Manescu  1 , Christine Chouinard-Leclaire  1 , Olivier Collignon  2   3 , Franco Lepore  1 , Johannes Frasnelli  1   4   5
Affiliations

Enhanced Odorant Localization Abilities in Congenitally Blind but not in Late-Blind Individuals

Simona Manescu et al. Chem Senses. .

Abstract

Although often considered a nondominant sense for spatial perception, chemosensory perception can be used to localize the source of an event and potentially help us navigate through our environment. Would blind people who lack the dominant spatial sense-vision-develop enhanced spatial chemosensation or suffer from the lack of visual calibration on spatial chemosensory perception? To investigate this question, we tested odorant localization abilities across nostrils in blind people compared to sighted controls and if the time of vision loss onset modulates those abilities. We observed that congenitally blind individuals (10 subjects) outperformed sighted (20 subjects) and late-blind subjects (10 subjects) in a birhinal localization task using mixed olfactory-trigeminal stimuli. This advantage in congenitally blind people was selective to olfactory localization but not observed for odorant detection or identification. We, therefore, showed that congenital blindness but not blindness acquired late in life is linked to enhanced localization of chemosensory stimuli across nostrils, most probably of the trigeminal component. In addition to previous studies highlighting enhanced localization abilities in auditory and tactile modalities, our current results extend such enhanced abilities to chemosensory localization.

Keywords: congenitally blind; late blind; odor localization; sensory compensation; trigeminal function.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Schematic view of the protocol.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
IE scores obtained in the odorant localization task (blue for almond and orange for eucalyptus). Panel A displays the results obtained by congenital blind individuals (almond: M = 2681.88, SD = 1284.83; eucalyptus: M = 2188.49, SD = 1649.44) and their matched sighted counterparts (almond: M = 3360.41, SD = 2183.12; eucalyptus: M =5224.10, SD = 2658.49). Panel B displays the results obtained by late-blind individuals (almond: M = 3724.30, SD = 2565.03; eucalyptus: M = 4658.13, SD = 4045.63) and their matched sighted counterparts (almond: M = 3040.57, SD = 1862.84; eucalyptus: M = 4443.46, SD = 2947.03). Panel C displays the standardized IE scores of blind individuals generated by their respective control groups (CB: almond: M = −0.31, SD = 0.59; eucalyptus: M = −1.14, SD = 0.62; LB: almond: M = 0.56, SD = 1.68; eucalyptus: M = 0.07, SD = 1.37).
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
IE scores obtained in the odorant identification task (blue for almond and orange for eucalyptus). Panel A displays the results obtained by congenital blind individuals (almond: M = 1757.50, SD = 769.89; eucalyptus: M = 1671.44, SD = 669.07) and their matched sighted counterparts (almond: M = 1639.58, SD = 654.21; eucalyptus: M = 1535.39, SD = 630.14). Panel B displays the results obtained by late-blind individuals (almond: M = 1862.13, SD = 854.12; eucalyptus: M = 2025.25, SD = 788.88) and their matched sighted counterparts (almond: M = 1735.08, SD = 536.04; eucalyptus: M =1806.24, SD = 581.25). Panel C displays the standardized IE scores of blind individuals generated by their respective control groups (CB: almond: M = 0.18, SD = 1.18; eucalyptus: M = 0.22, SD = 1.06; LB: almond: M = 0.24, SD = 1.59; eucalyptus: M =0.38, SD = 1.36).
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
IE scores obtained in the odorant detection task (blue for strawberry and orange for parmesan cheese). Panel A displays the results obtained by congenital blind individuals (strawberry: M = 967.90, SD = 210.30; parmesan cheese: M = 988.09, SD = 259.09) and their matched sighted counterparts (strawberry: M = 1070.00, SD = 357.57; parmesan cheese: M = 1300.42, SD = 725.73). Panel B displays the results obtained by late-blind individuals (strawberry: M = 1722.27, SD = 630.24; parmesan cheese: M = 1809.19, SD = 770.72) and their matched sighted counterparts (strawberry: M = 1493.51, SD = 544.28; parmesan cheese: M = 1717.39, SD = 790.65). Panel C displays the standardized IE scores of blind individuals generated by their respective control groups (CB: strawberry: M = −0.29, SD = 0.59; parmesan cheese: M = −0.43, SD = 0.36; LB: strawberry: M = 0.42, SD = 1.16; parmesan cheese: M = −0.16, SD = 0.39).
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