Psychophysical scaling of olfactory, visual, and auditory stimuli by alchoholic Korsakoff patients.

Abstract Ten alcoholic Korsakoff patients, ten alcoholic control subjects, and ten non-alcoholic control subjects performed psychophysical scaling of the intensity of stimuli in the visual, auditory, and olfactory modalities. Whereas the Korsakoff patients displayed normal scaling judgments in all three visual tasks and in two out of three auditory tasks, they evidenced a severe deficit in their scaling of olfactory stimuli. Korsakoffs were shown to have elevated thresholds for the perception of olfactory stimuli. These results are consistent with previous findings of an olfactory sensory impairment in alcoholic Korsakoff patients and may be attributable to damage to diencephalic and limbic brain structures in this disease.