Olfactory Impairments in Patients with Unilateral Cerebellar Lesions Are Selective to Inputs from the Contralesional Nostril

Mainland, Joel D.; Johnson, Bonnie; Khan, Rehan; Ivry, Richard B.; Sobel, Noam

doi:10.1523/jneurosci.0920-05.2005

Cited by 60 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Thus, this olfactory-spinal path could also activate the cerebellum in the rat. The existence of such a pathway in humans and other animal models is supported by studies that consistently found activation of the cerebellum by stimulation of the olfactory system [27,28]. Here we showed that distant stimulation with sexual cues seems to produce a similar effect in male rats.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Fos expression at the cerebellum following non-contact arousal and mating behavior in male rats

Manzo

Miquel

Toledo

et al. 2008

Physiology & Behavior

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The cerebellum is considered a center underlying fine movements, cognition, memory and sexual responses. The latter feature led us to correlate sexual arousal and copulation in male rats with neural activity at the cerebellar cortex. Two behavioral paradigms were used in this investigation: the stimulation of males by distant receptive females (non-contact sexual stimulation), and the execution of up to three consecutive ejaculations. The vermis area of the cerebellum was removed following behavioral experiments, cut into sagittal sections, and analyzed with Fos immunohistochemistry to determine neuronal activation. At the mid-vermis region (sections from the midline to 0.1 mm laterally), non-contact stimulation significantly increased the activity of granule neurons. The number of activated cells increased in every lobule, but lobules 1 and 6 to 9 showed the greatest increment. In sexual behavior tests, males reaching one ejaculation had a high number of activated neurons similar to those counted after non-contact stimulation. However, two or three consecutive ejaculations showed a smaller number of Fos-ir cells. In contrast to the mid-vermis region, sections farthest from the midline (0.1 to 0.9 mm laterally) revealed that only lobule 7 expressed activated neurons. These data suggest that a well-delineated group of granule neurons have a sexual biphasic response at the cerebellar vermis, and that Fos in them is under an active degradation mechanism. Thus, they participate as a neural substrate for male rat sexual responses with an activationdeactivation process corresponding with the sensory stimulation and motor performance occurring during copulation.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Fos expression at the cerebellum following non-contact arousal and mating behavior in male rats

Manzo

Miquel

Toledo

et al. 2008

Physiology & Behavior

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“…Olfactory perceptual impairments in patients with unilateral cerebellar lesions are found to be selective to nasal inputs on the side opposite the cerebellar lesion. 162 The results provide further evidence for an olfactocerebellar pathway and suggest that this pathway connects each nostril primarily to the contralateral cerebellum. The ability of a sniff to adjust odour sampling depending on odorant concentration and familiarity is thus seen to be an integral part of the olfactory percept.…”

Section: Active Sampling and Olfactory Perceptionsupporting

confidence: 52%

Human Olfactory Perception

Gelperin

2010

The Chemistry and Biology of Volatiles

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The scientific study of human olfactory perception, as for any sensory modality, perforce involves the use of rigorous psychophysical and psychometric methods, that is administering tightly controlled physical stimuli to human subjects while obtaining verbal or motor responses that indicate the subject's evaluation of the stimuli. The special challenges inherent in applying controlled and quantitative odorant stimuli often require sophisticated instrumentation for generating known concentrations of selected odorants 1 and collaborations between analytical chemists and psychophysicists to directly measure and control the chemical properties of the stimuli used to elicit subject responses adequate to the task of defining the relevant psychometric functions. 2-6 Assessments of olfactory thresholds require careful attention to methodology and careful comparison of the several different methods currently employed, 7 as do methods for determining odour quality. 8 A central problem in the study of olfactory information processing and the olfactory percepts that result from neural processing of olfactory stimuli is the lack of clear stimulus dimensions in olfaction, analogous to wavelength in vision and frequency in audition. 9 The relationship between molecular properties of an odorant molecule and its sensory properties is not yet understood. 10 To overcome this limitation, a large empirical literature has been developed to relate human olfactory perception to chemical structures grouped into classes of related compounds. 11 Using this prior psychophysical information on responses of human subjects to olfactory stimuli of varied chemical structure, 12 one can begin to make predictions of perceptual responses to new compounds or mixtures of compounds, albeit

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“…alterations in olfactomotor processing in diseases such as Parkinson's disease (Sobel et al, 2001) or after lesions to candidate components of the olfactomotor system such as the cerebellum (Mainland et al, 2005). Although sniffing may be considered an inseparable part of the olfactory percept (Kepecs et al, 2006;Mainland and Sobel, 2006;Schoenfeld and Cleland, 2006), it is nevertheless subserved by an independent olfactomotor system (Sobel et al, 1998).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spared and Impaired Olfactory Abilities after Thalamic Lesions

Sela¹,

Sacher²,

Serfaty³

et al. 2009

J. Neurosci.

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Olfactory information reaches olfactory cortex without a thalamic relay. This neuroanatomical substrate has combined with functional findings to suggest that, in olfaction, the typical thalamic role in sensory processing has shifted to the olfactory bulb or olfactory cortex. With this in mind, we set out to ask whether the thalamus at all plays a significant functional role in human olfaction. We tested olfactory function in 17 patients with unilateral focal thalamic lesions and in age-matched healthy controls. We found that thalamic lesions did not significantly influence olfactory detection but significantly impaired olfactory identification, and only right lesions altered olfactory hedonics by reducing the pleasantness of pleasant odors. An auditory control revealed that this shift in pleasantness was olfactory specific. These olfactory impairments were evident in explicit measures of perception, as well as in patterns of sniffing. Whereas healthy subjects modulated their sniffs in accordance with odorant content, thalamic patients did not. We conclude that, although the thalamus is not in the path of olfactory information from periphery to cortex, it nevertheless plays a significant functional role in human olfaction.

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Olfactory Impairments in Patients with Unilateral Cerebellar Lesions Are Selective to Inputs from the Contralesional Nostril

Cited by 60 publications

References 52 publications

Fos expression at the cerebellum following non-contact arousal and mating behavior in male rats

Fos expression at the cerebellum following non-contact arousal and mating behavior in male rats

Human Olfactory Perception

Spared and Impaired Olfactory Abilities after Thalamic Lesions

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