Intensified neuronal investment in the processing of chemosensory anxiety signals in non-socially anxious and socially anxious individuals.
- Authors
- Pause, Bettina M; Lübke, Katrin; Laudien, Joachim H; Ferstl, Roman
- Year
- 2010
- Journal
- PloS one
- PMID
- 20428249
- DOI
- 10.1371/journal.pone.0010342
- PMCID
- PMC2859067
BACKGROUND: The ability to communicate anxiety through chemosensory signals has been documented in humans by behavioral, perceptual and brain imaging studies. Here, we investigate in a time-sensitive manner how chemosensory anxiety signals, donated by humans awaiting an academic examination, are processed by the human brain, by analyzing chemosensory event-related potentials (CSERPs, 64-channel recording with current source density analysis). METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In the first study cerebral stimulus processing was recorded from 28 non-socially anxious participants and in the second study from 16 socially anxious individuals. Each individual participated in two sessions, smelling sweat samples donated from either female or male donors (88 sessions; balanced session order). Most of the participants of both studies were unable to detect the stimuli olfactorily. In non-socially anxious females, CSERPs demonstrate an increased magnitude of the P3 component in response to chemosensory anxiety signals. The source of this P3 activity was allocated to medial frontal brain areas. In socially anxious females chemosensory anxiety signals require more neuronal resources during early pre-attentive stimulus processing (N1). The neocortical sources of this activity were located within medial and lateral frontal brain areas. In general, the event-related neuronal brain activity in males was much weaker than in females. However, socially anxious males processed chemosensory anxiety signals earlier (N1 latency) than the control stimuli collected during an ergometer training. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: It is concluded that the processing of chemosensory anxiety signals requires enhanced neuronal energy. Socially anxious individuals show an early processing bias towards social fear signals, resulting in a repression of late attentional stimulus processing.
Grand Averages.(A) Grand Averages of the CSERPs of non-socially anxious female (left; N = 12, 24 sessions) and male (right; N = 16, 32 sessions) participants in response to sweat donated during the anxiety condition (black line) and the sport control condition (grey line) at pooled electrode positions (anterior left, anterior midline, anterior right, central left, central midline, central right, posterior left, posterior midline, posterior right). (B) Grand Averages of the CSERPs of socially anxious female (left; N = 8, 16 sessions) and male (right; N = 8, 16 sessions) participants in response to sweat donated during the anxiety condition (black line) and the sport control condition (grey line) at pooled electrode positions (see Fig. 1A).
Current Source Density (CSD) maps.Neuronal processing of chemosensory anxiety signals and sport control stimului plotted as CSD maps. The two left columns show the CSDs of non-socially anxious female and male participants plotted for the time point of the maximum P3 amplitude. The two right columns show the CSDs of socially anxious female and male participants plotted for the time point of the maximum N1 amplitude. Blue colors represent a weaker magnitude (neuronal sinks) and red colors represent a stronger magnitude of CSD (neuronal sources).
No entities extracted from this document yet.
| Filename | Size | Added | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20428249.pdf | 315330 bytes | 2026-05-15 | View |
In this knowledge base
| Title | Year | PMID |
|---|---|---|
| The use of current source density as electrophysiological correlates in neuropsychiatric disorders: A review of human studies. | 2015 | 25448264 |
External
| Title | Authors | Journal | Year | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A quasi-randomised pilot study on the efficacy and perceived usefulness of adding chemosignals to mindfulness practice for women with social anxiety. | Eliasson ET et al. | — | 2025 | → |
| Past, Present, and Future of Human Chemical Communication Research. | Loos HM et al. | — | 2025 | → |
| Unintended VOC emissions from cotton and viscose pads complicate olfactory experiments. | Ripszam M et al. | — | 2025 | → |
| Emotion perception through the nose: how olfactory emotional cues modulate the perception of neutral facial expressions in affective disorders. | Dal Bò E et al. | — | 2024 | → |
| Emotion perception through the nose: How olfactory emotional cues modulate the perception of neutral facial expressions in affective disorders | Bò ED et al. | — | 2024 | — |
| Influence of the human body odor compound HMHA on face perception. | Ferdenzi C et al. | — | 2024 | → |
| Investigating Inattentional Blindness Through the Lens of Fear Chemosignals. | Semin GR et al. | — | 2024 | → |
| Sexual Orientation Affects Neural Responses to Subtle Social Aggression Signals. | Lübke KT et al. | — | 2024 | → |
| Do you often sniff yourself or others? Development of the Body Odor Sniffing Questionnaire and a cross-cultural survey in China and the USA. | Li ZL et al. | — | 2022 | → |
| Emotional expression in human odour. | Roberts SC et al. | — | 2022 | → |
| Reading the Mind through the Nose: Mentalizing Skills Predict Olfactory Performance. | Lübke KT et al. | — | 2022 | → |
| The smell of cooperativeness: Do human body odours advertise cooperative behaviours? | Tognetti A et al. | — | 2022 | → |
| The role of olfaction and sex-hormone status in empathy-related measures. | Gamsakhurdashvili D et al. | — | 2021 | → |
| The social odor scale: Development and initial validation of a new scale for the assessment of social odor awareness. | Dal Bò E et al. | — | 2021 | → |
| You See What You Smell: Preferential Processing of Chemosensory Satiety Cues and Its Impact on Body Shape Perception. | Pause BM et al. | — | 2021 | → |
| Chemical Fingerprints of Emotional Body Odor. | Smeets MAM et al. | — | 2020 | → |
| Chemosensory communication of aggression: women's fine-tuned neural processing of male aggression signals. | Pause BM et al. | — | 2020 | → |
| Mu-Suppression as an Indicator of Empathic Processes in Lesbian, Gay, and Heterosexual Adults. | Lübke KT et al. | — | 2020 | → |
| The scent of emotions: A systematic review of human intra- and interspecific chemical communication of emotions. | Calvi E et al. | — | 2020 | → |
| Body odors (even when masked) make you more emotional: behavioral and neural insights. | Cecchetto C et al. | — | 2019 | → |
| Influence of gender and culture on the perception of acidic compounds of human body odor. | Ferdenzi C et al. | — | 2019 | → |
| Oxytocin reduces a chemosensory-induced stress bias in social perception. | Maier A et al. | — | 2019 | → |
| Women smelling men's masked body odors show enhanced harm aversion in moral dilemmas. | Cecchetto C et al. | — | 2019 | → |
| Effects of androstadienone on dominance perception in males with low and high social anxiety. | Banner A et al. | — | 2018 | → |
| Emotional Body Odors as Context: Effects on Cardiac and Subjective Responses. | Ferreira J et al. | — | 2018 | → |
| Empathic Cognitions Affected by Undetectable Social Chemosignals: An EEG Study on Visually Evoked Empathy for Pain in an Auditory and Chemosensory Context. | Hoenen M et al. | — | 2018 | → |
| Human Body Odour Composites Are Not Perceived More Positively than the Individual Samples. | Fialová J et al. | — | 2018 | → |
| Resting frontal EEG asymmetry in adolescents with major depression: Impact of disease state and comorbid anxiety disorder. | Feldmann L et al. | — | 2018 | → |
| Chemosensory danger detection in the human brain: Body odor communicating aggression modulates limbic system activation. | Mutic S et al. | — | 2017 | → |
| Human Fear Chemosignaling: Evidence from a Meta-Analysis. | de Groot JHB et al. | — | 2017 | → |
| On the Communicative Function of Body Odors. | de Groot JH et al. | — | 2017 | → |
| Pregnancy reduces the perception of anxiety. | Lübke KT et al. | — | 2017 | → |
| Always follow your nose: the functional significance of social chemosignals in human reproduction and survival. | Lübke KT et al. | — | 2015 | → |
| Human amygdala activations during nasal chemoreception. | Patin A et al. | — | 2015 | → |
| Rapid stress system drives chemical transfer of fear from sender to receiver. | de Groot JH et al. | — | 2015 | → |
| The Scent of Blood: A Driver of Human Behavior? | Moran JK et al. | — | 2015 | → |
| The use of current source density as electrophysiological correlates in neuropsychiatric disorders: A review of human studies. | Kamarajan C et al. | — | 2015 | → |
| Does human body odor represent a significant and rewarding social signal to individuals high in social openness? | Lübke KT et al. | — | 2014 | → |
| Context counts! social anxiety modulates the processing of fearful faces in the context of chemosensory anxiety signals. | Adolph D et al. | — | 2013 | → |
| Human gender differences in the perception of conspecific alarm chemosensory cues. | Radulescu AR et al. | — | 2013 | → |
| Variability of affective responses to odors: culture, gender, and olfactory knowledge. | Ferdenzi C et al. | — | 2013 | → |
| Differential processing of social chemosignals obtained from potential partners in regards to gender and sexual orientation. | Lübke KT et al. | — | 2012 | → |
| Processing of Body Odor Signals by the Human Brain. | Pause BM | — | 2012 | → |