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Olfactory Processing in Male Children with Autism: Atypical Odor Threshold and Identification

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An Erratum to this article was published on 30 August 2017

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Abstract

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.

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  • 30 August 2017

    An erratum to this article has been published.

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Author notes

  1. Filippo Muratori and Alessandro Tonacci have equally contributed to the present work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

    Filippo Muratori & Sara Calderoni

  2. IRCCS Stella Maris Foundation, Pisa, Italy

    Filippo Muratori, Lucia Billeci, Tiziana Catalucci, Roberta Igliozzi, Sara Calderoni & Antonio Narzisi

  3. National Research Council of Italy, Institute of Clinical Physiology, IFC-CNR, Via Moruzzi 1, 56124, Pisa, Italy

    Alessandro Tonacci

Authors
  1. Filippo Muratori
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  5. Roberta Igliozzi
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  6. Sara Calderoni
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Contributions

FM conceived of the study, participated in its design and coordination and drafted the manuscript; AT participated in the study conception, its design, data acquisition and interpretation of the data, and drafted the manuscript; LB participated in the design and coordination of the study and performed the statistical analysis; TC participated in data acquisition and interpretation of the data; RI participated in the study conception, its design and interpretation of the data; SC participated in the study conception and interpretation of the data; AN participated in the study conception, its design, interpretation of the data, and helped in drafting the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alessandro Tonacci.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Research Involving with Human Participants

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Additional information

An erratum to this article is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-017-3291-1.

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Muratori, F., Tonacci, A., Billeci, L. et al. Olfactory Processing in Male Children with Autism: Atypical Odor Threshold and Identification. J Autism Dev Disord 47, 3243–3251 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-017-3250-x

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