An examination of behavioral odor data in sensory disabled individuals

Objective: The aim of this study is to examine whether there is a difference between sensory disabled (blind, deaf) and healthy individuals in odor performance.Method: Forty one deaf (22 female), 40 blind (17 female) and 52 healthy (24 female participated in the study. Individuals? odor performance was measured by Sniffin? Sticks that consists of odor threshold, odor discrimination and odor identification. Obtained data were evaluated by SPSS 11.0.1 and one-way ANOVA was used for statistical analysis.Results: In results of threshold test, there were no significant differences between groups (deaf individuals: 7.40±3.47, blind individuals: 8.45±3.35, healthy individuals: 8.00±2.73), for discrimination, healthy individuals (12.32±1.81) had significantly better performance than deaf individuals (10.87±2.29) (F=5.66, p=.004). For identification, both blind individuals (11.45±1.99) and healthy individuals (11.96±1.48) had significantly higher points than deaf individuals (9.87±2.01, F=15.73, p=.000). On the contrary there was no difference between blind and healthy individuals. Total points (TDI) displayed similar to results of identification test (blind 31.65±5.09, deaf 28.15±5.56, healthy 32.30±3.86, F=9.33, p=.000).Conclusion: This study in the sensory disabled can be used as a template for assessing and designing behavioral as well as objective research studies. Additionally, study showed that olfactory sensation might be a modality in investigation of brain capacity in sensory disabled individuals.