olfaction - interesting link to this usbject...

[Bottle]

http://www.cf.ac.uk/biosi/staff/jaco

b/teaching/sensory/olfact1.html (\"http://www.cf.ac.uk/biosi/staff/jacob/teaching/sensory/olfact1.html\")

[pico]

good link!

but not so sure about this:

\"Recent research has shown that a panel of

women can discriminate between armpit swabs taken from people watching \"happy\" and \"sad\" films. Men were

less good at this. The emotions of others, for example fear, contentment, sexuality, may therefore be experienced

and communicated by smell.\"

this I find hard to believe, I\'d like to see the actual results and

conditions of the experiment.

[Bottle]

</font><blockquote><font class=\"small\">Quote:</font><hr />
good link!

but not so sure about

this:

\"Recent research has shown that a panel of women can discriminate between armpit swabs taken from

people watching \"happy\" and \"sad\" films. Men were less good at this. The emotions of others, for example

fear, contentment, sexuality, may therefore be experienced and communicated by smell.\"

this I find

hard to believe, I\'d like to see the actual results and conditions of the experiment.



<hr

/></blockquote><font class=\"post\">

isnt there info on the site to find that out if you wish...i\'m sure

there was

[DrSmellThis]

\"Discriminate\" has a \"statistical\" rather than \"mental\" meaning in experiments

such as this. If you didn\'t know this the study results would be harder to believe.

They just mean

participants responded differently to the happy vs sad swabs, (kind of like how lie detector responses show

differences) not that they understood what the difference was, knew which was which; or even that they were

responding differently. We also don\'t know how big the difference in response was in real terms, just that it was

a statistically significant difference.

Even scientists sometimes miss these points.

Still, these are strong

scientific results which hit upon what pheromones are -- a form of automatic, non-verbal, airborne (also tactile)

information exchange between animals. This is an exciting study because of the implications.

...hope this helps.

[jvkohl]

Probably a reference to Atzmueller\'s work (in Vienna) as published in Neuroendocrinolgy Letters. If

so, there\'s a link from my site to the pdf of the original article.

[Sagacious1420]

</font><blockquote><font class=\"small\">Quote:</font><hr />
good link!

but not so

sure about this:

\"Recent research has shown that a panel of women can discriminate between armpit swabs

taken from people watching \"happy\" and \"sad\" films. Men were less good at this. The emotions of others, for

example fear, contentment, sexuality, may therefore be experienced and communicated by smell.\"

this I find

hard to believe, I\'d like to see the actual results and conditions of the experiment.



<hr

/></blockquote><font class=\"post\">

What exactly is it that you\'re not sure of or find hard to believe?

[pico]

that you can smell the emotions of others from their smell!

[belgareth]

</font><blockquote><font class=\"small\">Quote:</font><hr />
that you can smell the emotions of

others from their smell!

<hr /></blockquote><font class=\"post\">

Why not? Animals do it all the time and

at that level we are little different from animals. Dogs sense when somebody is afraid of them, cats get skittish

when their owner is upset. Any experienced parent can tell you that babies get fussy when the parent(s) are stressed

or upset. There is even evidence that some animals can sense impending earthquakes. It is all done at the

subconcious level that we civilized humans try so hard to ignore but the ability is still there.

[bjf]

Our biology/chemistry changes with our emotions, so you can see it makes sense that we can smell

emotions/state of minds if we can smell our biology.

[DrSmellThis]

</font><blockquote><font class=\"small\">Quote:</font><hr />
Our biology/chemistry

changes with our emotions, so you can see it makes sense that we can smell emotions/state of minds if we can smell

our biology.



<hr /></blockquote><font class=\"post\">
This is the whole point of pheromones! This is why

they are interesting in the first place.