It is well established that early blindness results in enhancement of the remaining nonvisual sensory modalities accompanied by functional and anatomical brain plasticity. While auditory and tactile functions have been largely investigated, the results regarding olfactory functions remained less explored and less consistent. In the present study, we investigated olfactory function in blind mice using 3 tests: the buried food test, the olfactory threshold test, and the olfactory performance test. The results indicated better performance of blind mice in the buried food test and odor performance test while there was no difference in the olfactory threshold test. Using histological measurements, we also investigated if there was anatomical plasticity in the olfactory bulbs (OB), the most salient site for olfactory processing. The results indicated a larger volume of the OB driven by larger glomerular and granular layers in blind mice compared with sighted mice. Structural plasticity in the OB may underlie the enhanced olfactory performance in blind mice.

中文翻译：

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在先天性失明的小鼠模型中，更好的嗅觉性能和更大的嗅球。

众所周知，早期失明会导致其余的非视觉感觉形态的增强，并伴有功能性和解剖学上的大脑可塑性。虽然已经对听觉和触觉功能进行了广泛研究，但有关嗅觉功能的结果仍较少被探索且不一致。在本研究中，我们使用以下3种测试方法调查了盲小鼠的嗅觉功能：掩埋食物测试，嗅觉阈值测试和嗅觉性能测试。结果表明，在埋藏食物测试和气味测试中，盲小鼠的表现更好，而嗅觉阈值测试没有差异。使用组织学测量，我们还调查了嗅球（OB）（嗅觉处理的最重要部位）是否存在解剖可塑性。结果表明，与有眼力的小鼠相比，盲小鼠中较大的肾小球和颗粒层驱动的OB体积更大。OB中的结构可塑性可能是盲小鼠嗅觉性能增强的基础。