Pheromone Friday

Pheromones, emitted chemicals that elicit a social response in members of the same species, have been most widely studied in insects as a mode of communication. In theinsect world, pheromones can signal alarm, mark trails, control worker bee behavior, and elicit sexual behavior.Sex pheromones are the chemicals that come to mind in popular lore. Do human beings secrete substances that are likely to attract potential mates? Unscrupulous players in the fragrance industry would like you to believe that ' s the case. Unable to attract women (or men)? There ' s a difference between marketing an intoxicating and sensual fragrance that ' s pleasing to the nose and snake oil such as:Amazon even cautions prospective customers about SexyLife.{BTW, humans lack a functionalvomeronasal organ, the part of the accessory olfactory system that detects pheromones / chemosignals / non-volatile molecules (Petrulis, 2013).}Don ' t we already know that human pheromones are a crock?It depends on how you define pheromone, some would say.1“In mammals [rodents], few definitive cases have been identified in whichsingle pheromone compounds evoke robust sexual behaviours, which might reflect an important contribution of signature mixtures in sexual communication ” (Gomez-Diaz& Benton 2013,The joy of sex pheromones). In rodents, reproductive responses to “odor blends” or chemosignals areheavily modulated by experience, as opposed to the instinctive and fixed behaviors elicited by pheromones in ...
Source: The Neurocritic - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Source Type: blogs