Pheromones affect the human brain.
According to the general understanding, pheromones can not only help organisms find food and avoid enemies, but also attract individuals of the opposite sex and affect the mating behavior of animals. However, the pheromone effect in human body has always been a controversial topic in the field of biology, and many scientists are skeptical about whether it plays the same role in human activities.
In the Journal of the National Academy of Sciences published this week, Savage, a researcher from Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden, pointed out that pheromones do exist in human bodies and directly cause reactions in the human brain.
Savage and his colleagues extracted two kinds of testosterone derivatives-and EST, which are pheromones in human body. "and mainly exists in male sweat" and "EST is a compound in female urine"
Savic et al.' s early research found that when women smell EST and/or men smell EST, the hypothalamic area in the brain that controls sexual behavior will be activated. In other words, pheromones can really affect the hormone secretion of the human body through brain reactions. And EST plays a dual role in men and women: on the one hand, it attracts the opposite sex with smell, on the other hand, it produces "sexual interest" in the opposite sex.
Gay men attract each other because of sweat.
After explaining the reason of "opposites attract", the latest research is further extended to the same sex. This time, Savage and others invited 12 women, 12 heterosexual men and 12 gay men to observe and test these three groups of subjects. The researchers asked them to smell Harmony, EST and Lavender respectively, and then scanned them to monitor their brain reactions.
"In contrast to heterosexual men, gay men and heterosexual women also respond to harmony, and the inferior colliculus is also very active." Savage's team wrote that the activity in the posterior hypothalamus is the strongest, which happens to be the area "most related to sexual behavior" in animals.
As for the common fragrance, such as lavender, there was no difference among the three groups.
"These findings show that our brains respond differently to these two recognized pheromones compared with ordinary smells, which also shows that there is a correlation between sexual orientation and inferior colliculus neurons." Savage's research report said.
However, the reaction of gay women did not appear in the research report. In this regard, Savage said that the research data of gay women are "very complicated" and need to be handled with caution at present.
Smell is more attractive than appearance?
Some scientists believe that Savage and others have made great breakthroughs in the fields of human pheromones and human sexual characteristics respectively.
At present, the biological world is more inclined to think that human beings rely more on vision to respond to the opposite sex or external things, so the sense of smell may not be decisive. But new research may mean that many characteristics of human sexual activity come from the sense of smell.
The scientific community has recognized the role of pheromones in animals such as mice. In most animals, pheromone signals will reach the hypothalamus of the brain through a structure called vomeronasal organ in or near the nasal cavity. The human body has pheromone receptors, but there are no nerves connected to the brain, so biologists question whether humans will respond to pheromones.