Abstracts - Association for Chemoreception Sciences

#P185 POSTER SESSION IV:
CHEMICAL SIGNALING AND BEHAVIOR;
ANIMAL BEHAVIOR/PSYCHOPHYSICS;
CHEMOSENSATION AND METABOLISM;
VOMERONSASAL AND CHEMICAL
COMMUNICATION
#P186 POSTER SESSION IV:
CHEMICAL SIGNALING AND BEHAVIOR;
ANIMAL BEHAVIOR/PSYCHOPHYSICS;
CHEMOSENSATION AND METABOLISM;
VOMERONSASAL AND CHEMICAL
COMMUNICATION
Social Olfactory Cues and Stress
Pamela Dalton, Cristina Jaen, Tamika Wilson, Christopher Maute
Monell Chemical Senses Center Philadelphia, PA, USA
Olfactory cues have the potential to precipitate emotional
responses and thereby alter mood, judgments and behavior.
In prior work, we demonstrated that exposure to a novel odor
while undergoing a laboratory stressor caused individuals
to re-experience stress (increased heart rate & self-reported
stress) when re-exposed to that odor three days later. We
wished to evaluate the potential for odor to alter stress levels
following a standard laboratory stressor. One class of olfactory
stimuli which has shown promise in eliciting robust effects on
mood and emotion are social odors. Lundström et al. (2008)
demonstrated that smelling a stranger’s body odor activated
a marked response in the amygdala of subjects, despite a low
conscious recognition of the odor or its source. In this study,
we evaluated the changes in autonomic stress levels following
the Trier Social Stress Test among individuals in 3 groups who
were exposed to either the body odor of their sibling, the body
odor of a stranger or a non-social (fragrance) odor. Axillary
odors were collected from non-twin, whole, biological siblings
who were then recalled to participate in the main study in which
one of the 3 odors was administered following the stress task.
Results showed a significant decrease in post-recovery heart
rate only among the group smelling the sibling odor, whereas
skin conductance was significantly reduced for both the sibling
odor and the fragrance. Following a stressor, exposure to the
stranger body odor maintained arousal levels longer suggesting
that both familiar and stranger body odors may be potent cues
for emotional responses. Acknowledgements: Supported by the
U.S. Army Research Office grant # W911NF-11-1-0087, entitled
“Learning & Olfaction: Understanding and Enhancing a Critical
Communication Channel”.
Can a chemosensory threat be masked?
Amy R Gordon 1,2 , Kathrin Ohla 2,3 , Mats J Olsson 1 ,
Johan N Lundstrom 1,2,4
1
Karolinska Institutet Stockholm, Sweden, 2 Monell Chemical Senses
Center Philadelphia, PA, USA, 3 German Institute of Human
Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbrücke, Germany, 4 University of
Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA, USA
The well-established angry advantage effect has been extended
in recent crossmodal visual-olfactory studies using schematic
human faces and human body odors. In a threat-detection task,
humans detect an angry (threatening) schematic face in an
array of neutral distracter faces more quickly than a friendly
(non-threatening) face, hence the label ‘Angry advantage’.
We have previously shown that the body odor of unknown
individuals (Strangers) – an established threatening olfactory
stimulus – speeds a subject’s detection of threatening faces, but
not non-threatening faces, relative to exposure to the subject’s
own body odor (Self). Using event-related potential (ERPs),
we have more recently demonstrated that the presence of
a Strangers’ body odor causes a non-threatening face to be
processed as a threatening stimulus. In the present ERP study,
we sought to determine whether the chemosignal mediating the
aforementioned ERP effect could be masked by a common odor
(Mask). Angry and neutral schematic faces were presented to
subjects in the presence of Strangers’ body odor + Mask, ‘Self’
body odor + Mask, or Mask only control, which were delivered
intra-nasally by a computer-controlled olfactometer. Preliminary
analyses suggest that even in the presence of an odor mask,
exposure to the body odor of a stranger, relative to the odorless
control and ‘Self’ body odor, results in significant differences
in the late (cognitive) components of visual processing. This
suggests that body odor can modulate the cognitive evaluation
of visual stimuli even in the presence of a perceptual odor mask.
The effects of masked body odor and common odor exposure
on visual processing will be presented and discussed within the
framework of the adaptive advantages conveyed by heightened
sensitivity to threat-related stimuli. Acknowledgements: This
work was supported by the National Institute on Deafness and
other Communication Disorders – NIDCD (R03DC009869)
awarded to JNL
POSTER PRESENTATIONS
Abstracts are printed as submitted by the author(s).
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