PheromonesToSeduce | Pheromones in Media | Male pheromones

Something in the Way She Smells

ABC News

By Melinda T. Willis

When it comes to sexual attraction, new research provides evidence that the nose knows. Women who wore perfume with synthesized female pheromone were more attractive to their male partners, conclude scientists at San Francisco State University.

Pheromones are odorless chemicals excreted from the body that affect reproductive interactions among both animals and humans. They are picked up by a special organs or tissues in the nose, and then conveyed to regions higher up in the brain.

The new study, appearing in the journal Physiology and Behavior, found that women who had pheromone added to their perfume reported a more than 50 percent increase in sexual attention from men: they were involved in more sexual intercourse, kissing, heavy petting, affection, and slept closer to their partner or date.

Women wearing perfume with a placebo also experienced an increase in these activities, though not as great as the pheromone group. The authors say this increase can be explained by the effect that results from "just thinking" you are wearing a sexy pheromone.

"The most highly significant difference between the placebo and the pheromone group was actually sexual intercourse," says Norma McCoy, lead author and professor of psychology at San Francisco State University. "It is clear that there is something that is odorless and is being exuded from reproductive age women — that affects male behavior — that makes the women attractive."


The Sex Sense
ABC News

By Amy Malick, PhD

While it is well documented that females and males of many species can communicate through chemical signals called pheromones, there has remained some question as to whether humans can communicate this way as well.

Using brain imaging, Swedish researchers have found new evidence that men and women can in fact send and receive subconscious odor signals. And, that men and women, it seems, respond to the smells differently.

Pheromones are airborne chemical messengers released from the body (through, for example, sweat and urine) that have a physical or emotional effect on another member of the same species.

Most animals smell or "sense" pheromones through a specialized half-moon shaped structure located inside the nose called the vomeronasal organ. Pheromone signals picked up by the organ are then relayed through nerves to an area of the brain called the hypothalamus, which is well known for its ability to alter emotions, hormones, reproduction and sexual behavior.

Ordinary, non-pheromone smells such as the scents of food or flowers are recognized by a different part of the nose called the olfactory epithelium.


Pheromone triples women's sexual success
By NewScientist.com news service

A dab of artificial sweat can hugely increase your chance for romance, say researchers in California. They found that a commercial synthetic "pheromone" tripled the sexual success of women.

Psychologist Norma McCoy and her student Lisa Pitino at San Francisco State University found in a study of 36 women that sexual behaviour with men was three times as high in women who added a sexy chemical to their perfume, compared to women who received a placebo.

McCoy believes the additive, known only as Athena Pheromone 10:13, is making them more attractive to men. She rules out an alternative explanation, that the pheromone is increasing sexual drive, because masturbation was not increased.

"It's a very impressive study with data that looks incredible," says Joan Friebely of Harvard University who is now looking at the effect of the same pheromone in post-menopausal women. But other experts say it is difficult to make sense of the experiment until 10:13 - whose composition is a trade secret - is revealed.


Study finds proof that humans react to pheromones
CNN News

The power of smell is undeniable, as the multi-billion dollar perfume industry testifies. But is it possible that humans are influenced by airborne chemicals undetectable as odors, called pheromones?

Though any number of animals and insects use pheromones to communicate with each other about important things such as food, territory and sex, the idea that humans might be similarly influenced has been controversial among scientists.

But now, researchers at the University of Chicago say they have the first proof that humans produce and react to pheromones.

In findings published in the journal Nature, researchers say they found that female ovulation can be regulated -- made longer or shorter -- through the use of pheromones.

"The pheromones regulate the time of ovulation. There are two pheromones -- one that makes ovulation more likely and the other that suppresses it and makes it less likely," said Martha McClintock of the University of Chicago.

There could be important practical implications from this finding. Because pheromones influence the release of eggs, researchers say they may provide a more natural way of preventing pregnancy or treating infertility.

However, researchers say more study is needed to find out if there are other types of pheromones and if they are as powerful in humans as they are in other species.

One enduring mystery of pheromones is that if they are undetectable by the human sense of smell, how can humans be influenced by them?

The answer, some researchers believe, is that pheromones are detected by the same nerve cells in the nose used to detect odor or perhaps by another structure in the nose called the vomeronasal organ.


Following Our Noses
TIME Mazagine
By Jeffrey Kluger

If you're an animal, there are few things as valuable as a good nose. In a world without speech, it's often scent alone that tells you if a stranger is in the mood to mate or in distress, is preparing to attack or about to retreat in fear. The chemicals that carry these odorless messages are called pheromones, and while most animals produce them, the highest animals--humans--were thought to be above such crude olfactory signals.

Last week all that changed. In a paper published in the journal Nature, psychologist Martha McClintock of the University of Chicago reported what may be the best evidence yet of human pheromones. In an elegantly straightforward experiment, she was able to speed up and slow down the monthly cycles of a group of women by exposing them to a whiff of sweat from other women. The ovulatory command, she believes, was carried by pheromones.

If McClintock is right, the implications could be sweeping, offering not just new insights into human communication but practical medical applications as well. "Once you establish that pheromones exist," McClintock says, "the question becomes how far-ranging they can be."

For most scientists, pheromones are nothing new. In the 1930s entomologists first noticed that female moths are able to excite males even when the males can neither see nor hear them. The males, they discovered, "smell" the females, grabbing their fragrance out of the air with exquisitely sensitive antennae. Once that fragrance was isolated, it was found to be powerful indeed, able to stimulate millions of moths with concentrations of less than one 300-millionth of an ounce.

When substances this potent hit the sensory systems of a relatively unsophisticated animal, they pack a big behavioral wallop. Pheromones emitted by queen bees prevent other females from maturing sexually, ensuring that the queen's genes remain dominant. Among fish, scent markers released by females cause male sperm counts to quintuple overnight. When injured by a predator, some amphibians emit a compound that warns others of their species to keep out of harm's way.

It is in mammals that the pheromonal chatter climaxes. Countless species--from wolves to musk ox--claim territory by urinating around their borders, an olfactory keep-off-the-grass sign if there ever was one. Male voles use urine as a potent aphrodisiac, excreting a chemical that causes females to ovulate within 48 hours. "Identify anything that's of biological significance to animals," says Rachel Herz of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, "and it's usually mediated by scent."