Lifelong auditory and visual sensory deprivation have been demonstrated to alter both perceptual acuity and the neural processing of remaining senses. Recently, it was demonstrated that individuals with anosmia, i.e. complete olfactory sensory deprivation, displayed enhanced multisensory integration performance. Whether this ability is due to a reorganization of olfactory processing regions to focus on cross-modal multisensory information or whether it is due to enhanced processing within multisensory integration regions is not known. To dissociate these two outcomes, we investigated the neural processing of dynamic audio-visual stimuli in individuals with congenital anosmia and matched controls (both groups, n = 33) using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Specifically, we assessed whether the previously demonstrated multisensory enhancement is related to cross-modal processing of multisensory stimuli in olfactory associated regions, the piriform and olfactory orbitofrontal cortices, or enhanced multisensory processing in established multisensory integration regions, the superior temporal and intraparietal sulci. No significant group differences were found in the a priori hypothesized regions using region of interest analyses. However, exploratory whole-brain analysis suggested higher activation related to multisensory integration within the posterior superior temporal sulcus, in close proximity to the multisensory region of interest, in individuals with congenital anosmia. No group differences were demonstrated in olfactory associated regions. Although results were outside our hypothesized regions, combined, they tentatively suggest that enhanced processing of audio-visual stimuli in individuals with congenital anosmia may be mediated by multisensory, and not primary sensory, cerebral regions.

终生的听觉和视觉感官剥夺已被证明会改变感知敏锐度和剩余感官的神经处理。最近，已证明患有嗅觉障碍（即完全嗅觉剥夺）的个体表现出增强的多感觉统合表现。这种能力是由于嗅觉处理区域的重组以专注于跨模式多感官信息还是由于多感官整合区域内的处理增强尚不清楚。为了区分这两种结果，我们研究了先天性嗅觉障碍患者和匹配对照组（两组，n = 33) 使用功能磁共振成像。具体而言，我们评估了先前证明的多感觉增强是否与嗅觉相关区域、梨状和嗅觉眶额皮质多感觉刺激的跨模式处理有关，或与已建立的多感觉整合区域、颞上沟和顶内沟中增强的多感觉处理有关。在先验中没有发现显着的组差异使用感兴趣区域分析的假设区域。然而，探索性全脑分析表明，在先天性嗅觉丧失的个体中，与感兴趣的多感觉区域附近的颞上沟内的多感觉整合相关的更高激活。在嗅觉相关区域中没有表现出组间差异。尽管结果超出了我们假设的区域，但它们暂时表明先天性嗅觉障碍患者对视听刺激的增强处理可能是由多感觉而非初级感觉大脑区域介导的。