Brain NeuroPsychology: Scent of a Woman (or a Man)
Think_n_See
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1770505,00.html
Here's the article below (reprinted from this website):
Revealed: how scent of a woman attracts lesbians
Ian Sample, science correspondent
Tuesday May 9, 2006
The Guardian
Sex pheromones, the chemicals some scientists believe waft off the body
to help attract sexual partners, are processed differently in the brain
depending on our sexuality.
Using a brain scanning technique called positron emission tomography,
scientists found that a potent chemical lurking in male sweat causes a
rush of electrical activity in the brains of straight women and gay
men, while lesbians and straight men treat it like any other common
odour.
Ivanka Savic, a neuroscientist at the Stockholm Brain Institute who led
the study, said the finding suggested specific brain circuits were
engaged when we were exposed to chemicals we found sexually
stimulating. She added that the scans did not reveal whether sexual
behaviour was learned or hard-wired in our brains at birth.
In the study, three groups of 12 volunteers, including lesbians,
heterosexual women and straight men, were asked to sniff a variety of
odours. They included odourless air, four common scents and a chemical,
known as androstadienone (AND) that is 10 times more abundant in male
than female sweat and is suspected of acting as a male pheromone.
After smelling the odours, the volunteers were given brain scans that
revealed which regions of their brains had the greatest increase in
blood flow, a measure of how much they had been stimulated. The scans
showed that after sniffing AND, a region of the brain called the
anterior hypothalamus lit up in heterosexual women and gay men.
The brain scans of lesbian women and straight men showed a marked
difference after sniffing the male sweat chemical, however. Brain scans
revealed activity increasing in parts of the brain called the piriform
cortex and amygdala, which are believed to light up when the brain
processes any odour.
The researchers also found that lesbians and heterosexual men responded
in the same way to a potential female pheromone called EST. Brain scans
showed that clusters of neurons lit up in the brains of both groups
when they smelled the odour, which were not activated in heterosexual
women.
"This is the first study to show that these chemicals can activate
specific brain circuits," Dr Savic said. The study appears today in the
journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
da5zeay
ON DEMAND! I wonder if there are different kinds of sweat...for
example, if a man sees an attractive woman and sweats NERVOUSLY, I
wonder if the odor part is the same? Clammy sweat doesn't seem
particularly sexy :-)
I was going to post a link to something I saw on a respectable website
that claimed that "ogling women was good for men's health, extending
life expectancy". It claimed that a good eyeful was equivalent to 30
minutes of exercise! It turned out to be a hoax from the Weekly World
News that originally appeared in 1991 :-)