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Second-Hand Stress: Neurobiological Evidence for a Human Alarm Pheromone

Lilianne R. Mujica-Parodi¹, Helmut H. Strey¹, Blaise Frederick², Robert Savoy³, David D. Cox⁴, Yevgeny Botanov⁵, Denis Tolkunov⁵, Denis Rubin⁵ & Jochen Weber⁶

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1. State University of New York at Stony Brook, Biomedical Engineering
2. McLean Hospital Brain Imaging Center, Consolidated Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
3. Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology
4. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
5. State University of New York at Stony Brook, Department of Biomedical Engineering
6. Columbia University, Department of Psychology

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Document Type:

Manuscript

Date:

Received 24 November 2008 19:50 UTC; Posted 25 November 2008

Subjects:

Neuroscience

Tags:

• amygdala,
• Human
• pheromone
• alarm
• stress
• fear

Abstract:

Alarm pheromones are airborne chemical signals, released by an individual into the environment, which transmit warning of danger to conspecifics via olfaction. Using fMRI, we provide the first neurobiological evidence for a human alarm pheromone. Individuals showed activation of the amygdala in response to sweat produced by others during emotional stress, with exercise sweat as a control; behavioral data suggest facilitated evaluation of ambiguous threat.

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License:

This document is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

How to cite this document:

Mujica-Parodi, Lilianne, Strey, Helmut, Frederick, Blaise, Savoy, Robert, Cox, David, Botanov, Yevgeny, Tolkunov, Denis, Rubin, Denis, and Weber, Jochen. Second-Hand Stress: Neurobiological Evidence for a Human Alarm Pheromone. Available from Nature Precedings <http://hdl.handle.net/10101/npre.2008.2561.1> (2008)

Version info:

Published version:

10.1371/journal.pone.0006415 (Peer Reviewed) Published as Mujica-Parodi LR, Strey HH, Frederick B, Savoy R, Cox D, et al. (2009) Chemosensory Cues to Conspecific Emotional Stress Activate Amygdala in Humans. PLoS ONE 4(7): e6415.

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