TY - JOUR
T1 - Olfactory Processing in Male Children with Autism
T2 - Atypical Odor Threshold and Identification
AU - Muratori, Filippo
AU - Tonacci, Alessandro
AU - Billeci, Lucia
AU - Catalucci, Tiziana
AU - Igliozzi, Roberta
AU - Calderoni, Sara
AU - Narzisi, Antonio
N1 - Extracted concepts
Autistic Disorder
PY - 2017/7/25
Y1 - 2017/7/25
N2 - Sensory issues are of great interest in ASD diagnosis. However, their investigation is mainly based on external observation (parent reports), with methodological limitations. Unobtrusive olfactory assessment allows studying autism neurosensoriality. Here, 20 male children with high-functioning ASD and 20 matched controls were administered a complete olfactory test battery, assessing olfactory threshold, identification and discrimination. ASD children show lower sensitivity (p = 0.041), lower identification (p = 0.014), and intact odor discrimination (p = 0.199) than controls. Comparing olfactory and clinical scores, a significant correlation was found in ASD between olfactory threshold and the CBCL social problems (p = 0.011) and aggressive behavior (p = 0.012) sub-scales. The pattern featuring peripheral hyposensitivity, high-order difficulties in odor identification and regular subcortical odor discrimination is discussed in light of hypo-priors hypothesis for autism.
AB - Sensory issues are of great interest in ASD diagnosis. However, their investigation is mainly based on external observation (parent reports), with methodological limitations. Unobtrusive olfactory assessment allows studying autism neurosensoriality. Here, 20 male children with high-functioning ASD and 20 matched controls were administered a complete olfactory test battery, assessing olfactory threshold, identification and discrimination. ASD children show lower sensitivity (p = 0.041), lower identification (p = 0.014), and intact odor discrimination (p = 0.199) than controls. Comparing olfactory and clinical scores, a significant correlation was found in ASD between olfactory threshold and the CBCL social problems (p = 0.011) and aggressive behavior (p = 0.012) sub-scales. The pattern featuring peripheral hyposensitivity, high-order difficulties in odor identification and regular subcortical odor discrimination is discussed in light of hypo-priors hypothesis for autism.
KW - Autism
KW - Hypo-priors hypothesis
KW - Olfactory functioning
KW - Sensory processing
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U2 - 10.1007/s10803-017-3250-x
DO - 10.1007/s10803-017-3250-x
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85025834472
SP - 1
EP - 9
JO - Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
JF - Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
SN - 0162-3257
ER -