Does Human Body Odor Represent a Significant and Rewarding Social Signal to Individuals High in Social Openness?

Lübke, Katrin T.; Hoenen, Matthias; Gerber, Johannes; Pause, Bettina M.; Hummel, Thomas

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0094314

Cited by 32 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…Taken together, chemosensory signals influence psychosocial stress reactions in humans, akin to a variety of other species ( Albrecht et al, 2010 ; Lübke et al, 2014 ). Moreover, females were shown to be more sensitive to male odor cues than males (e.g., Zhou and Chen, 2009 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influence of Menstrual Cycle and Androstadienone on Female Stress Reactions: An fMRI Study

Chung

Peisen

Kogler

et al. 2016

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Communicating threats and stress via biological signaling is common in animals. In humans, androstadienone (ANDR), a synthetic male steroid, is a socially relevant chemosignal exhibited to increase positive mood and cortisol levels specifically in (periovulatory) females in positively arousing contexts. In a negative context, we expected that such effects of ANDR could amplify social evaluative threat depending on the stress sensitivity, which differs between menstrual cycle phases. Therefore, this fMRI study aimed to examine psychosocial stress reactions on behavioral, hormonal and neural levels in 31 naturally cycling females, between 15 early follicular (EF) and 16 mid-luteal (ML) females tested with ANDR and placebo treatment in a repeated-measures design. Regardless of odor stimulation, psychosocial stress (i.e., mental arithmetic task with social evaluative threat) led to elevated negative mood and anxiety in all females. A negative association of social threat related amygdala activation and competence ratings appeared in ML-females, indicating enhanced threat processing by ANDR, particularly in ML-females who felt less competent early in the stress experience. Further, ML-females showed reduced performance and stronger stress-related hippocampus activation compared to EF-females under ANDR. Hippocampal activation in ML-females also correlated positively with post-stress subjective stress. Contrarily, such patterns were not observed in EF-females or under placebo in either group. Strikingly, unlike passive emotional processing, ANDR in a stressful context decreased cortisol concentration in all females. This points to a more complex interaction of ovarian/gonadal hormones in social threat processing and stress reactivity. Our findings suggest that ANDR enhanced initial evaluation of self-related social threat in ML-females. Female stress reactions are related to stress sensitivity through enhanced awareness and processing of social cues in a stressful context, with menstrual cycle phase being a critical factor.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influence of Menstrual Cycle and Androstadienone on Female Stress Reactions: An fMRI Study

Chung

Peisen

Kogler

et al. 2016

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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show abstract

“…It was also suggested that coactivation of the reward system and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortices during evaluation of self compared to others might contribute to the integration of social comparisons into evaluation of self (Lindner et al, 2015). Interestingly, an fMRI study (Lübke et al, 2014) that used body odors rather than visual body stimuli found very similar brain regions involved during perception of others' (males and females) body odors-the fusiform cortex, the anterior and posterior cingulate cortices, and the anterior insular cortex.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex differences in own and other body perception

Burke

Majid

Manzouri

et al. 2018

Human Brain Mapping

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Own body perception, and differentiating and comparing one's body to another person's body, are common cognitive functions that have relevance for self‐identity and social interactions. In several psychiatric conditions, including anorexia nervosa, body dysmorphic disorder, gender dysphoria, and autism spectrum disorder, self and own body perception, as well as aspects of social communication are disturbed. Despite most of these conditions having skewed prevalence sex ratios, little is known about whether the neural basis of own body perception differs between the sexes. We addressed this question by investigating brain activation using functional magnetic resonance imaging during a Body Perception task in 15 male and 15 female healthy participants. Participants viewed their own body, bodies of same‐sex, or opposite‐sex other people, and rated the degree that they appeared like themselves. We found that men and women did not differ in the pattern of brain activation during own body perception compared to a scrambled control image. However, when viewing images of other bodies of same‐sex or opposite‐sex, men showed significantly stronger activations in attention‐related and reward‐related brain regions, whereas women engaged stronger activations in striatal, medial‐prefrontal, and insular cortices, when viewing the own body compared to other images of the opposite sex. It is possible that other body images, particularly of the opposite sex, may be of greater salience for men, whereas images of own bodies may be more salient for women. These observations provide tentative neurobiological correlates to why women may be more vulnerable than men to conditions involving own body perception.

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“…Accordingly, information conveyed by sweat derived chemicals per se might act as a social signal, recruiting attentional resources. This interpretation is supported by studies showing that even non-emotional human body odor is perceived as significant information, acting as social reward signal in socially open individuals (Lübke et al, 2014 ), and facilitating automatic imitation in autistic children (Parma et al, 2013 ).…”

Section: Study 2: Visually Induced Empathy For Pain In a Chemosensorymentioning

confidence: 83%

Empathic Cognitions Affected by Undetectable Social Chemosignals: An EEG Study on Visually Evoked Empathy for Pain in an Auditory and Chemosensory Context

Hoenen

Lübke

Pause

2018

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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Reduction of mu activity within the EEG is an indicator of cognitive empathy and can be generated in response to visual depictions of others in pain. The current study tested whether this brain response can be modulated by an auditory and a chemosensory context. Participants observed pictures of painful and non-painful actions while pain associated and neutral exclamations were presented (Study 1, N = 30) or while chemosensory stimuli were presented via a constant flow olfactometer (Study 2, N = 22). Chemosensory stimuli were sampled on cotton pads while donors participated in a simulated job interview (stress condition) or cycled on a stationary bike (sport condition). Pure cotton was used as a control. The social chemosignals could not be detected as odors. Activity within the 8–13 Hz band at electrodes C3, C4 (mu activity) and electrodes O1, O2 (alpha-activity) was calculated using Fast-Fourier-Transformation (FFT). As expected, suppression of power in the 8–13 Hz band was stronger when painful as compared to non-painful actions were observed (Study 1, p = 0.020; Study 2, p = 0.005). In addition, as compared to the neutral auditory and chemosensory context, painful exclamations (Study 1, p = 0.039) and chemosensory stress signals (Study 2, p = 0.014) augmented mu-/alpha suppression also in response to non-painful pictures. The studies show that processing of social threat-related information is not dominated by visual information. Rather, cognitive appraisal related to empathy can be affected by painful exclamations and subthreshold chemosensory social information.

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Does Human Body Odor Represent a Significant and Rewarding Social Signal to Individuals High in Social Openness?

Cited by 32 publications

References 56 publications

The Influence of Menstrual Cycle and Androstadienone on Female Stress Reactions: An fMRI Study

The Influence of Menstrual Cycle and Androstadienone on Female Stress Reactions: An fMRI Study

Sex differences in own and other body perception

Empathic Cognitions Affected by Undetectable Social Chemosignals: An EEG Study on Visually Evoked Empathy for Pain in an Auditory and Chemosensory Context

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