Early-blind individuals show impaired performance in wine odor categorization
International audience; 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 t…
Body odors of newborns activate neuronal regions associated with reward in women
abstract in symposium Cerebral Imaging in Taste and Olfaction; Olfactory signals are prime mediators of mother-infant bonding in. mammals, and they have been shown to be linked with maternal. attitudes and behavior in our own species as well. Human mothers. are indeed highly attentive to their infants odor cues, but although. we have good understanding of the neuronal network supporting. mother-infant olfactory recognition in various mammals, to date. no such information exists for humans. The present study is a first attempt at delineating the neural. network underlying the processing of infant odor properties by. women. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI),. we measured the …
Wine discrimination in early-blind individuals
International audience