Good article on androstadienone

[surfs_up]

check

this out...

http://www.senseofsmell.org/acr/Volume_VII_No_%204.pdf

[Icehawk]

Ohh yeah, good read. Confirms

most of our findings, except never paid atention to the fact that it causes a 'down' after long exposure time to

it. Makes sense biologically though, natures way of creating a need for more social closeness...

[metropolitan]

perfect timing! my first

bottle of it arrived to day, i've been very curious to experiment with it.
it's a problem to do a good forum

search for it since it's often referred to as A1 which is too short a word for a search.
thanks for the

article.
any comments or reviews on the use of androstadienone greatly appreciated

[NaughtieGirl]

check this

out...



http://www.senseofsmell.org/acr/Volume_VII_No_%204.p

df

Thank you Surfs_up!

But now I’m trying to grasp the bottom-line of this article. Would you (or anyone else) mind

commenting on these statements?


First they

say:
“We determined that .4,16-androstadien-3-one

(androstadienone) fails to simply release specific feelings of increased self-esteem, friendliness or sociability in

women and 1,3,5(10)16-estratetraen-3-ol (estratetraenol) fails to do the same for men.”


...
Stimulation with these

chemicals ... produced gender-specific patterns of electrical activity. This suggests that psychological effects

might also be gender-specific; however this turned out not to be the case.

But then they say:
“However, both

steroids produced changes in pharmacological, emotional, and physical state relative to control in both men and

women over a nine-hour period after initial exposure.”
...
Interestingly, at nine hours after

exposure when the effects of the steroids may have been wearing off, women appeared to manifest a rebound effect ... women felt

depressed...

Then – Now I’m paraphrasing because I’m tired

of cut and paste


Women responded both to androstadienone and

estratetraenol.
Men responded only to estratetraenol.



For women anxiety and feeling down rebounded or increased after 2

hours.
Men rebounded after 9 hours.

So anxiety and and feeling down increased after 2

hours/9hours?

But it also says:


Men had initially a more negative mood response to both

steroids, including androstadienone.... With estratetraenol men reported greater earlier negative responses on the

drug and mood scales.


But earlier it states that men only

responded to estratetraenol? Also, I understood that the mood response was immediate and then the rebound (bad)

effect came respectively 2 hours later for women and 9 hours later for men?

I’m not even talking about their next study where they say:
Androstadienone, however, maintained their initial levels of positive mood and prevented the increase of

negative mood seen when they were exposed only to the carrier oil.

I’m so confusing myself now. Has my reading comprehension gone down the drain, or is this

article not very clearly written? What are your thoughts on this article?

[surfs_up]

the gist of the article appears to be that these pheromones trigger a

general state of increased activity in the brain, in some fashion like the effects of other drugs (albeit far

milder), and there is a noted rebound effect as is also noted with other drugs (that may account for some of the

negative reports), buttttt, they aren't acting as SPECIFIC triggers for sexual behavior or sexual fantasy. It now

seems most probable that the sexual or sensual aspect requires contextual factors which the pheromones (at least

these pheromones) may amplify...

[NaughtieGirl]

Thanks again Surfs_up. So

to summarize:

...fails to simply release specific feelings of

increased self-esteem, friendliness or sociability in women ... fails to do the same for men. -

Meaning no sexual effect.

However, both

steroids produced changes in pharmacological, emotional, and physical state relative to control in both men and

women over a nine-hour period after initial exposure.

Women

responded both to androstadienone and estratetraenol.
Men responded

only to estratetraenol.

Women rebounded after 2 hours.

- Guys you have 2 hours to make an impression!
Men rebounded after 9 hours. - Galls we get to take our time!




This I still don't understand:



Men had initially a more negative mood response to both steroids,

including androstadienone.... With estratetraenol men reported greater earlier negative responses on the drug and

mood scales.

Oh they must be talking about

"initial" response at time of rebound, not at time of application?




Androstadienone, however, maintained their (men and

womens?) initial levels of positive mood and prevented the increase of negative mood seen when they were

exposed only to the carrier oil.- This still seems a contradiction to the paragraph

above.



I don't mean to sound picky, I just hate it when I don't fully

comprehend something!

Now... If only they could repeat all those studies with all the other and new pheromones, we'd be all

set!

[surfs_up]

I'd bet their staff writer doesn't know the subject well, if at all, and was handed a

research report and told to turn it into understandable language for the non-scientist reader. Some parts of this

article are incoherent, as you noticed. I'm curious whether there is an intial, moments after exposure "bumout

window" afer which there is mood elevation, after which there is another bumout window, or if there is an initial

(dopamine release from the sound of it) mood/attention upsurge followed by a negative rebound. There have been

sufficient ambiguities reported here as anecdote, "OD responses" etc... that suggest some subject may experience

hostility, negative emotions, onset of depression perhaps (a paradoxical dopamine response ?) where others

experience mood elevation. Anyone who has been through the throes of intense young romance-sexual attraction knows

how intrinsically mood swingy procreative behaviors are.... Surfs_Up theory of imprinting is: elevated brain

activity probably increases long term memory potentiation (this also explains why Post Traumatic Stess Disorder

involves disturbing memories "hard imprinted"... those memories were formed during periods of maximal brain

stimulation).... in mate selection, Mother Nature may have wanted the images/memories of one's mate to be strongly

fixed, and the pheromonal surge of these substances may permit the brain to make indelible associations.... and this

may also explain why certain persons who are total jerks remain hard to remove from one's thoughts... there is a

powerful associative bridge formed between pleasure memory sensations (emotional/physical) and images of this

person... even when subsequent events show that logically you want to not be connected to that person. Under the

right conditions, when a good relationship choice is made for both logical and emotional reasons, the pheromonal

imprinting establishes the basis of a long term pair bond... I think...

[metropolitan]

if it makes things clearer.

it says men only responded with the vno to estratetraenol but they did have a psychological reaction to both

androstadienone and estratetraenol --therefore the psychological reaction of males to androstadienone seems to come

independently of the VNO. makes sense?

as to other issues in the article there's a feeling that it's attempting

to repudiate claims on pheromones and hardwired sexual reactions (remember that dr mcclintock is one of the classic

pheromone researchers and i'm sure much of her findings are often distorted and exaggerated so it seems she tries

to take a very cautious approach) the only problem is that she just adds fuel to the fire in this

paragraph:

Body states of sensuality and warmth (measured by a visual analog scale) were

increased

or maintained by androstadienone.Since animal research has inextricably

linked behavioral pheromones to

sexualbehavior, further work is required to

determine which specific aspects of physical condition made

women feel more

sensual and whether this is related to underlying mood states or to physical

state

changes that are associated with sexual arousal.

what i got out of it is that there is a

sexual/sensual response, but that a correct context is necessary. the circumstances of a clinical experiment don't

sound too sexy. since there was a sensual reaction during that trial then i'm sure it is amplified in a more sexual

context and with a recepient as the originator and focus of the sensual impulse.
other clinical experiments that

have used pictures of potential mates and have shown increase in sensual evaluation --which in a sense is focusing

the sensual response on the picture and essentially forcing a cause-and-effect evaluation in the mind of the test

subject. (i.e. "i have a higher sexual/sensual feeling, it must be due to the picture of this cute guy" --when it's

actually due to the level of androstadienone in the air).

[NaughtieGirl]

Yes, it certainly is not clearly written. Maybe as Metropolitan pointed out, they are trying to be very cautious.

Then they throw in the other stuff, creating confusion because.... they would like to do further research! Now

where's that grant money!

See - "...further work is required to determine which specific aspects of

physical condition made women feel more sensual and whether this is related to ..."

Their comments about the "no

light on the potential existence of a human VNO" are neither here nor there for me, because I don't believe (only

from what I've read, I could be wrong) that the two are mutually exclusive. In other words if someone proves to me

tomorrow that there is no VNO, I would still have faith in the pheromones.

[jollysnowdevil]

kind of contradictory to

itself