It is becoming more difficult for me to idly stand by as marketers continue to run the course of bastardizing the concept of human pheromones. I was surprised to see Discover mention a product by name in this regard.
James V. Kohl
www.scentoferos.com
Oxytocin is a hormone indeed and seems to have very interesting benefits
for people with autistic disorders such as ADHD and Asperger Syndrome
(such as myself) when it is used intranasally. Btw, where in the blogpost
did you see marketers? Did you mean that " david ropeik " seemed to
have bashed pheromones in general in his comments below the blogpost?
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I was referring to the mention of Liquid Trust in the article. The marketers are saying its a pheromone.
JVK
Mr. Kohl,
What are your thoughts on the effectiveness of Liquid Trust and spray-on Oxytocin in general?
Thanks!
I haven’t seen any evidence that oxytocin is a pheromone, so there’s no reason to believe that spray-on oxytocin provides other than an effect due to the power of suggestion. If I were interested in information to support their marketing claims, I doubt that I could find it. Most important would be a comparison of the amount of oxytocin in their product to the amount of the hormone used in the real research.
James V. Kohl
www.scentoferos.com
The connection between Oxytocin and Aspergers is very interesting indeed. I find the connection with the theory of Aspergers being the extreme male brain and oxytocin increasing empathetic qualities quite compelling.
Gonadotropin releasing hormone is involved both in sexual differentiation of the brain and in oxytocin release. I wonder how many people involved in Aspereger’s research have looked at this connection.
James V. Kohl
scentoferos.com
Hehe, I am not as educated as you are so I don’t understand how that is
connected to Asperger, but what I do understand is that some research
(1) long time ago suggested that oxytocin may have a connection to
autistic disorder since it was found that children with autistic diagnoses
had lower oxytocin levels compared to control subjects. This does not
mean a cause n effect relationship but the findings are indeed interesting.
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I tend to be interested in integration of information. When I see something that links oxytocin to mother-infant bonding, which is decidedly a function of pheromones, and also to Asperger’s, it suggests how they might be linked. I wasn’t aware of the associated lower oxytocin levels, so it’s not likely our levels of education matter as much as what we read and think about.
Hormone oxytocin may help Asperger’s patients - Los Angeles Times
JVK
Wow that article is really interesting. I’d be really interested to know more about that. It’s insane that it could help Asperger’s patients that much, and in such a direct way… I mean it’s directly fighting some of the main ‘symptoms’ of Asperger’s. Although it just improved a bit, this could be big.
The link between the hormone and Asperger’s is but one of many hormone-syndrome links, which suggests that it may come down to the interaction of hormones, many of which also are dependent on gonadotropin releasing hormone. A google search (oxytocin and GnRH) may help start you looking at information from many different sources in this regard.
JVK
This is a very interesting article. To me, the findings point to oxytocin being a key trigger for the activation of the attachment system.
For those unfamiliar, attachment theory researchers have well established that an individual’s basic orientation toward relationships is set up early in life, and tends to be stable over the lifespan. Depending on the child’s relationship to primary caregivers, they will develop one of four attachment styles: secure, anxious, dismissive, or confused. Then, throughout our lives, specific types of situations trigger our innate attachment system, which contains our internalized model of how we should most effectively relate to the people who are important to us.
I can’t remember where, but I’ve heard the idea proposed before that autism represented a basic disruption of this attachment system, and the finding that oxytocin can temporarily enhance attachment functioning in these patients seems to support that conclusion. Perhaps even more interesting is the finding that administration of oxytocin to healthy people tended to exaggerate their existing feelings toward their own early attachment figures.
It could be that the administration of this hormone overrides conscious mediation of attachment functioning, causing the subjects’ attitudes toward attachment figures to become more basic and primitive.
James, what’s your definition of a pheromone?
Pheromones’: a new term for a class of biologicall… [Nature. 1959] - PubMed result
Karlson and Luscher (1959) wrote: “Pheromones are defined as substances which are secreted to the outside by an individual and received by a second individual of the same species, in which they release a specific reaction, for example, a definite behaviour, or a developmental process (p. 55).”
I’ve never had reason to stray very far from the above definition and have detailed how mammalian pheromones, including human pheromones, release behaviors via their influence on developmental processes. People confuse terms like olfactory and pheromonal because some of them believe human pheromones act via a non-functional VNO. Others think that there are no human pheromones because specific receptors have not been found. Still others think that virtually anything they’ve purchased contains pheromones because they have been told it does, or because they can link it to behavioral affects.
My 2007 book chapter provides the scientific details (more for other researchers than consumers, however):
James V. Kohl: The Mind’s Eyes: Human Pheromones, Neuroscience, and Male Sexual Preferences
That’s a very good definition. Very simple and concrete. So would you agree that any hormone secreted by an individual and can be received by another individual of the same species, which of course would create a specific reaction because it is a hormone, would be a pheromone?
No, I disagree! There’s much more to be considered even in staying with this basic definition. How is it that the hormone becomes a pheromone via its secretion? What developmental process does it effect so that it might have an affect on behavior. Note the difference between effect and affect; a hormonal effect can become a behavioral affect. I think that you may be implying that the hormone itself elicits a behavioral affect, which is very much like what the marketers are saying when they say oxytocin does whatever they think it does to behavior. That’s like saying testosterone is a pheromone or that all hormones are pheromones. You also missed the “same species” part of the definition. The effect of pheromones on hormones must be somewhat constrained (canalized) for a particular species to develop via sexual reproduction. Oxytocin, for example, is a mammalian hormone; there’s no evidence even in other species that it’s a pheromone.
Great question, nonetheless.
James V. Kohl
Ah! That’s thought-process of a scientist, always questioning what to
others might be taken for granted. I agree that the definition could become
more specific. For example, I have read in one research paper (1) that a
pheromone known as androstadienone can modulate women’s judgements
of men’s attractiveness. However, there was no dose dependent response
detected or a “cause n’ effect”-finding. So, pheromones interactions with
other (un)known factors in human social interactions seem to be complex.
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“How is it that a hormone becomes a pheromone via it’s secretion?” Can hormones not be received by a second individual of the same species through hormone receptors in the skin? Hormones.gr (Hormones.gr) Please correct me if I have misunderstood this article.
I’m not arguing, I’m asking so that I may have a better understanding. That’s why I asked you for a definition first. Because I don’t know what defines a pheromone. And you are the first expert that I have had the opportunity to speak with.
“What developmental process does it effect so that it might have an affect on behavior”? The documentation that you provided says “a definite behaviour, or a developmental process”**
I think we would have to discuss specific hormones, however adrenal hormones and pituitary hormones would answer those questions as they effect both developmental processes and affect behavior. Or am I misunderstanding the question? For instance epinephrine would affect behavior and can be absorbed through the skin.
However oxytocin in this case does seem to be jumping the gap. It’s more likely that oxytocin may be linked to memory of calm feelings as a child for any child that has been breastfed.
My issues with androstadienone, which initially was proposed to exert its effects via the now known to be non-functional human VNO, is that 1.) there’s no other data that suggests its a pheromone other than that gathered on false premises with follow-up studies by those who were convinced that it was a human pheromone. 2). there’s no indication that it influences behavior. Ratings of photos or whatever may or may not translate to affects on behavior, but the exposure level to get a change in ratings is many times that of natural exposure. In fact, some colleagues used a very similar study design to the one we used to show an affect on flirtatious behavior and self-reported ratings of attraction, and reported at a conference (as we have done with our positive findings on several occasions) that “The current results reject the idea that Androstadienone enhances flirting behavior within couples.” I’m not sure whether they are planning any follow up studies, but our results are being independently evaluated.
James V. Kohl
scentoferos.com
Hormones metabolize to become pheromones, and the only way I know they can work is via olfactory pathways and an effect on the hormone GnRH. The article is probably a bit misleading because you may not have the background you need to interpret it. The developmental processes that a pheromone effects in mammals are those driven by the hormone GnRH, which directs the concurrent maturation of the central nervous system, the neuroendocrine system, and the reproductive system. That’s why we get such powerful effects of our social environment on hormones linked to changes in behavior; the developmental processes lead to changes in behavior. This the same in insects as it is in mammals, so there’s no reason not to use the original definition–though some people say it doesn’t apply to mammals. I say, physiology is physiology and it doesn’t need to be exactly the same physiology for us to recognize similarities in cause and effect (that cannot be directly attributed to non-olfactory/pheromonal stimuli).
James V. Kohl
ScentofEros.com