[Sense of smell in deaf and blind patients]

The olfactory performances of 10 visually-impaired and 9 hearing-impaired subjects were investigated by a psychophysical sniffing test (the Munich Olfaction Test). These subjects were compared with 21 control volunteers who completed the test with covered eyes, 20 control volunteers whose ears were plugged during the test and with 22 unimpaired controls. The test examined discrimination performances, detection and perception thresholds, identification abilities, olfactory memory, and hedonistic evaluations of all subjects. The present results showed that attention focusing on olfactory tasks by lowering of auditory or visual inputs did not enhance the olfactory performances of the control subjects. Also, the visually-impaired subjects did not perform better then the control subjects. The diminished olfactory abilities of the hearing-impaired were discussed against the background of delayed language acquisition.