Human Pheromones: Abandoned by the Wayside

The great intellectual wagon train of behavioral science rolls on, leaving behind heaps of junk that the scientific pioneers no longer find useful. Miles back there’s a big pile of specialized “instincts” for this and “drives” for that. Further up, the trail is strewn with Skinner boxes and the shabby wreckage of behaviorism. In the near distance are items more recently jettisoned: the excess baggage of mammalian pheromones.

Georgia State researcher Aras Petrulis is the latest to toss the pheromone concept to the side of the road. In a review article to appear soon in the journal Hormones and Behavior, he examines “chemosignals, hormones and mammalian reproduction.” His conclusions echo those of Richard Doty.

Petrulis doesn’t deny the importance of smell. In his view, “it is clear that social odors play a substantial and oftentimes obligatory role in mammalian reproduction.” However, he believes that the actions of these social odors rarely meet the definition of a pheromone. Why?

The role of learning and memory in the behavioral and physiological responses to opposite-sex conspecifics is generally under-appreciated by the non-specialist. [Don’t be offended, FN readers! Dr. Petrulis’s condescension is directed toward other PhDs—those outside his narrow discipline.] Many of the reproductive effects reviewed above are clearly subject to learning in adulthood as evidenced by their dependency on sexual experience or prior contact with chemosignals as well as by their ability to be conditioned to previously neutral odors.

This dependence on learning and context undercuts the most fundamental idea of a pheromone; that is, that responses to it are “instinctual” and therefore not learned. Similarly, the fact that most chemosignals altering mammalian behavior and/or physiology are complex mixtures often lacking species-specificity, rather than being potent and essential singular compounds, further erodes the utility of the term “pheromone”. Because of these concerns, it is perhaps wise to restrict the term to molecules that have met each and every criterion of a pheromone, as used in the classical ethological sense.[Emphasis mine.]

And if we restrict the term as he so gingerly suggests, where does that leave us with respect to human pheromones?

Lastly, it should be clear that chemosignals are neither necessary nor sufficient for human reproduction nor do they have a privileged place in directing human social behavior. Positive findings of human chemical communication, when not based on flawed analysis . . . are often inconsistent, and at best, demonstrate modest effects on human behavior and physiology.

So take it from a guy who studies sex behavior for living: drop the human pheromones and lighten your load.

The study discussed here is “Chemosignals, hormones and mammalian reproduction,” by Aras Petrulis, published online in Hormones and Behavior, March 29, 2013.

Fragrance Felony: Why Steal a Discontinued Perfume?

From the HuffPo: “Juan Bernal Stole $117,000 Worth of Perfume in New Jersey, Including Victoria’s Secret Line: Cops.”

Why is this filed under Weird News? Because it conjures up an image of some guy tiptoeing out of a store with hundreds of bottles of perfume? Not exactly.

Cops say Bernal stole 1,890 4.2-ounce bottles of 5th Avenue by Elizabeth Arden Friday, valued at $109,620. He also reportedly took 234 3.4-ounce bottles of Victoria’s Secret PINK, valued at $7,488.

That’s close to 1,000 pounds worth of goods. Not something you can slip into your pants.

Juan Bernal, 52, allegedly employed a 17-year-old boy to help him pull off the haute heist. The two are accused of loading thousands of bottles swiped from Cosmetics Essence Innovations in Holmdel into an SUV . . .

So the goods were stolen from a manufacturer’s facility and the kid was the muscle. Wholesale perfume theft is big economic issue, although by New Jersey standards this heist was small potatoes. (Cops are valuing the Eliz. Arden at full list price of $58.)

I do think there is a “weird” element to this story. According to this report, the VS perfume was Live Pink, launched in 2010 and now discontinued. Here’s my question: Does this make it more or less valuable on the black market? In other words, is Juan Bernal a criminal mastermind or a doofus?

I’d love to hear what some fume heads think.

Coming Attractions: Sperm Wars—The Bourgeonal Strikes Back

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Earlier this year I declared that the Bourgeonal Sperm Wars were over. Now it seems that announcement may have been a bit . . . premature.

The Prequel
Bourgeonal, which smells like lily of the valley, activates the OR1D2 olfactory receptor found in the human nose and on human sperm cells. Bourgeonal is also the only odorant to which men are more sensitive than are women, and sperm respond to it as well. This led some researchers to suggest that bourgeonal is a chemosignal that guides sperm to the egg.

However, Timo Strünker and colleagues demonstrated that the CatSper Ca2+ ion channel, the molecular mechanism which triggers the relevant behavioral changes in sperm, is activated not only by bourgeonal but by steroids, prostaglandins, menthol, and helional (everything but the kitchen sink). As a finishing touch, Strünker et al. found that the OR1D2 receptor itself is not necessary for bourgeonal to activate the CatSper channel. So much for the notion of sperm tracking the egg by lily of the valley scent.

The New Releases
Now come two papers linking olfactory perception of bourgeonal to human infertility. The first is by olfaction researcher Thomas Hummel and colleagues at the University of Dresden Medical School. They gave smell tests to men with idiopathic infertility, i.e., guys from couples trying unsuccessfully for two years to get pregnant in the absence of a medical cause. The infertile guys were compared to proven fathers of similar age.

The groups did not differ in overall smell ability, or in sensitivity (detection threshold) to bourgeonal and a couple of other floral scents: helional and phenylethyl alcohol. However, infertile guys perceived the odor of bourgeonal as significantly less intense at above-threshold concentrations. The perceived the other two scents the same as the fertile guys. According to Hummel et al., decreased olfactory sensitivity to bourgeonal may relate “to a decreased functionality of OR1D2, which in turn may be linked to idiopathic infertility.”

I know what you’re thinking: this is a slender thread on which to hang the bourgeonal story. But the same week, a paper by an Italian research group at the University of Padua came up with a finding that took the story even further.

Led by Giancarlo Ottaviano, the group compared a group of infertile men to a set of healthy controls. The infertile guys were significantly less sensitive to the odor of bourgeonal (detection threshold), and their sperm were significantly less likely to migrate in the direction of bourgeonal. Genetic analysis of the OR1D2 receptor showed that single nucleotide polymorphisms (tiny genetic mutations) were more common among the infertile men. The Padua team believes they have confirmed the importance of olfactory receptor-based bourgeonal detection in human male infertility.

The Review
Based on the Strünker papers I thought the sperm-guided-by-bourgeonal idea was probably an artifact. However, these new findings are not easy to dismiss. It looks like there will be more episodes of Sperm Wars in the future.

The studies discussed here are “Decreased perception of bourgeonal may be linked to male idiopathic infertility,” by Charlott Sinding, Eva Kemper, Petra Spornraft-Ragaller, and Thomas Hummel, published online in Chemical Senses, March 27, 2013, and “Human olfactory sensitivity for bourgeonal and male infertility: a preliminary investigation,” by Giancarlo Ottaviano, D. Zuccarello, M. Menegazzo, L. Perilli, G. Marioni, A.C. Frigo, A. Staffieri, and C. Foresta, published online in European Archives of Otorhinolaryngology, March, 2013.

Creating a Virtual Odor Source: Fluid Dynamics Meets the Fun House

Smell-O-Vision is the hardy perennial of sensory technology. Engineers and artists keep returning to the idea, tweaking it here and there: a virtual reality helmet, a small device for beneath movie theater seats, and so on. Smell-o-vision is an idea as intrinsically cool as it is goofy. It gets more than its share of giggles: for example, yesterday’s April Fools debut of the Google Nose beta. (OK, the “safe search” feature was mildly amusing . . .)

For some reason, most advances in smell-o-vision technology originate in Japan. At the recent IEEE Virtual Reality conference in Orlando, researchers Haruka Matsukura, Tatsuhiro Yoneda, and Hiroshi Ishida from Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology demonstrated a smell-capable video display. People have jury-rigged such devices before. The new wrinkle here is that the scent emerges from a specific area of the screen.

How do they do it? Via “computational fluid dynamics.” They aim multiple converging airstreams so as to create an outward flow from a specific location.

The proposed system has four fans on the four corners of the screen. The airflows that are generated by these fans collide multiple times to create an airflow that is directed towards the user from a certain position on the screen. By introducing odor vapor into the airflows, the odor distribution is as if an odor source had been placed onto the screen. The generated odor distribution leads the user to perceive the odor as emanating from a specific region of the screen.

That’s sorta cool, even if it doesn’t live up to the ridiculously overblown headline at Extremetech: “Japanese smell-o-vision TV releases scents with per-pixel accuracy.”

As a proof of principle, this technology opens up all sorts of interesting applications quite apart from video screens. I could see colliding airstreams being used to create pop-up smells in a walk-through environment. Imagine an olfactory fun house . . .

The Prince and the Plaintiff

Prince is probably a little less rich than he was a few days ago. After being sued in 2008 by the licensee of his unsuccessful fragrance 3121, the purple one stiffed his attorney, failed to show up in court, and was eventually slapped with a default judgment and $3.9 million in damages after a New York judge accepted the findings of a court-appointed referee.

That’s where “fraudulent inducement and tortious interference with contract” gets you.

Facing the loss of some serious coin, Prince appears to have pulled it together and appealed that judgment. Court papers filed last Wednesday indicate that he and the plaintiff, Revelations Perfume, have now settled out of court. Universal Music, also named in the suit, appears to be part of the settlement. Bloomberg’s Chris Dolmetsch reports that while attorneys confirm the case is settled, they are not willing to disclose the terms.