Scent of a man – pheromone-enhanced processing of male faces
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1
Institute for Biomagnetism and Biosignalanalysis, Germany
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2
Technische Universität Dresden, Germany
Pheromones are chemical cues which serve as social signals between individuals. While their influence on physiology and behavior is well-accepted in animals, the existence of pheromones in humans is still under debate. We hypothesized that pheromone-associated social stimuli draw emotional attention. This might lead to a prioritized processing of these stimuli reflected by increased brain responses. In a MultiCS-conditioning study with 20 females, we paired 52 neutral male faces with either a glycol dissolved androgen derivate mainly secreted by males (Δ4, 16-androstadien-3-one; AND) or the pure solvent glycol and measured neural activity by magnetoencephalography (MEG) during re-exposure to faces only. We showed increased visual evoked fields (VEFs) for AND but not glycol associated faces. Timing (130-290 ms) and field topography of the VEFs closely resembled the Early Posterior Negativity (EPN-m) an event-related field/potential component associated with amplified emotional attention towards affective pictorial stimuli. Inverse modeling revealed sources localized in brain structures relevant for processing of visual social stimuli and emotion (right temporo-parietal junction, TPJ and left orbito-frontal cortex, OFC). Convergent to the interpretation of an enhanced emotional connotation, AND associated faces also received superior pleasantness ratings. Importantly, both neurophysiological and behavioral effects emerged even though participants rated the AND odor equally neutral as glycol and could not explicitly differentiate AND from solvent associated faces (no contingency awareness). Our data demonstrate that the role of chemical cues as social signals between human individuals has hitherto been underestimated and should gain more attention by further investigations.
Keywords:
emotion,
MEG
Conference:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI), Palma, Mallorca, Spain, 25 Sep - 29 Sep, 2011.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Poster Sessions: Emotion, Motivation and the Social Brain
Citation:
Klinkenberg
I,
Bröckelmann
A,
Dobel
C,
Kirschbaum
C,
Plessow
F and
Junghöfer
M
(2011). Scent of a man – pheromone-enhanced processing of male faces.
Conference Abstract:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2011.207.00163
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Received:
18 Nov 2011;
Published Online:
28 Nov 2011.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Isabelle Klinkenberg, Institute for Biomagnetism and Biosignalanalysis, Münster, Germany, i.klinkenberg@uni-muenster.de