Abstract

Congenital blindness is associated with atypical morphology and functional connectivity within and from visual cortical regions; changes that are hypothesized to originate from a lifelong absence of visual input and could be regarded as a general (re) organization principle of sensory cortices. Challenging this is the fact that individuals with congenital anosmia (lifelong olfactory sensory loss) display little to no morphological changes in the primary olfactory cortex. To determine whether olfactory input from birth is essential to establish and maintain normal functional connectivity in olfactory processing regions, akin to the visual system, we assessed differences in functional connectivity within the olfactory cortex between individuals with congenital anosmia (n = 33) and matched controls (n = 33). Specifically, we assessed differences in connectivity between core olfactory processing regions as well as differences in regional homogeneity and homotopic connectivity within the primary olfactory cortex. In contrast to congenital blindness, none of the analyses indicated atypical connectivity in individuals with congenital anosmia. In fact, post-hoc Bayesian analysis provided support for an absence of group differences. These results suggest that a lifelong absence of olfactory experience has a limited impact on the functional connectivity in the olfactory cortex, a finding that indicates a clear difference between sensory modalities in how sensory cortical regions develop.

中文翻译：

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尽管终生没有嗅觉体验，但正常的嗅觉功能连通性。

摘要

先天性失明与视觉皮层区域内外的非典型形态和功能连接有关；假设源于终生缺乏视觉输入的变化，可以被视为感觉皮层的一般（重新）组织原则。具有挑战性的事实是先天性嗅觉丧失（终生嗅觉丧失）的个体在初级嗅觉皮层中几乎没有表现出形态学变化。为了确定出生时的嗅觉输入对于建立和维持类似于视觉系统的嗅觉处理区域的正常功能连接是否必不可少，我们评估了先天性嗅觉障碍患者（n  = 33）和匹配对照组之间嗅觉皮层内功能连接的差异(n  = 33）。具体而言，我们评估了核心嗅觉处理区域之间的连通性差异以及初级嗅觉皮层内区域同质性和同位连通性的差异。与先天性失明相反，没有一项分析表明先天性嗅觉障碍患者存在非典型的连通性。事实上，事后贝叶斯分析为不存在群体差异提供了支持。这些结果表明，终生缺乏嗅觉体验对嗅觉皮层的功能连通性的影响有限，这一发现表明感觉皮层区域如何发展的感觉方式之间存在明显差异。