olfactory impairment is correlated with confabulation in alcoholism towards a multimodal testing of orbitofrontal cortex嗅觉障碍与虚构在酗酒对眶额皮层的多通道测试.pdfVIP

Olfactory Impairment Is Correlated with Confabulation in Alcoholism: Towards a Multimodal Testing of Orbitofrontal Cortex 1 1 2 2 3. Pierre Maurage *, Christophe Callot , Betty Chang , Pierre Philippot , Philippe Rombaux , Philippe de Timary2,4. 1 Neuroscience, Systems and Cognition (NEUROCS) and Health and Psychological Development (CSDP) Research Units, Institute of Psychology, Catholic University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, 2 Health and Psychological Development (CSDP) Research Unit, Institute of Psychology, Catholic University of Louvain, Louvain-la- Neuve, Belgium, 3 Department of Otorhinolaryngology, St Luc Hospital and Institute of Neuroscience, Catholic University of Louvain, Brussels, Belgium, 4 Department of Psychiatry, St Luc Hospital and Institute of Neuroscience, Catholic University of Louvain, Brussels, Belgium Abstract Background: Olfactory abilities are now a flourishing field in psychiatry research. As the orbitofrontal cortex appears to be simultaneously implicated in odour processing and executive impairments, it has been proposed that olfaction could constitute a cognitive marker of psychiatric states. While this assumption appears promising, very few studies have been conducted on this topic among psychopathological populations. The present study thus aimed at exploring the links between olfaction and executive functions. These links were evaluated using two tasks of comparable difficulty, one known to rely on orbitofrontal cortex processing (i.e., a confabulation task), and one not associated with this area (i.e., Stop-Signal task). Methodology/Principal Findings: Twenty recently detoxified alcoholic individuals and twenty paired controls took part i