A putative social chemosignal elicits faster cortical responses than perceptually similar odorants

Publikation: Beitrag in FachzeitschriftForschungsartikelBeigetragenBegutachtung

Beitragende

Abstract

Social chemosignals, so-called pheromones, have recently attracted much attention in that effects on women's psychophysiology and cortical processing have been reported. We here tested the hypothesis that the human brain would process a putative social chemosignal, the endogenous steroid androstadienone, faster than other odorants with perceptually matched intensity and hedonic characteristics. Chemosensory event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded in healthy women. ERP analyses indicate that androstadienone was processed significantly faster than the control odorants. Androstadienone elicited shorter latencies for all recorded ERP components but most so for the late positivity. This finding indicates that androstadienone is processed differently than other related odorants, suggesting the possibility of a specific neuronal subsystem to the main olfactory pathway akin to the one previously reported in Old-world monkeys and emotional visual stimuli in humans.

Details

OriginalspracheEnglisch
Seiten (von - bis)1340-1346
Seitenumfang7
FachzeitschriftNeuroImage
Jahrgang30
Ausgabenummer4
PublikationsstatusVeröffentlicht - 1 Mai 2006
Peer-Review-StatusJa

Externe IDs

Scopus 33748207794
ORCID /0000-0001-9713-0183/work/164619720

Schlagworte

Ziele für nachhaltige Entwicklung

Schlagwörter

  • Adult, Androstadienes, Androsterone, Attention/physiology, Brain Mapping, Cerebral Cortex/physiology, Chemoreceptor Cells/physiology, Dose-Response Relationship, Drug, Electroencephalography, Evoked Potentials/physiology, Female, Humans, Hydrogen Sulfide, Middle Aged, Motion Perception/physiology, Olfactory Pathways/physiology, Pattern Recognition, Visual/physiology, Pheromones, Psychomotor Performance/physiology, Psychophysics, Reaction Time/physiology, Sensory Thresholds, Smell/physiology, Social Behavior