I watched the film “The Social Network” earlier this week. I was struck by the irony that the main founder of Facebook who had so many social deficits himself ended up creating a global system for connecting with others. It’s a system for a virtual connection that is different than a real world relationship but is unrivaled in its scope and lightning-fast speed. There is a clear generation gap in how connecting through the internet is perceived. Older folks like me see engaging through the internet as a less real connection. It certainly eliminates the possible pheromone connections that I posted about. Now this study I am posting about today attempts to establish genetic linkages in social networks. If you read through the summary you will see that the data is far from a slam dunk. Maybe there are genetic similarities in social networks, and maybe there are not. But if there are, the questions are why we would aggregate with people who share a bit of DNA with us and how we could possibly perceive who shares these little pieces of DNA and who doesn’t.
Archive for the ‘Pheromones’ Category
Genetic Social Networks?
Thursday, January 27th, 2011Another Thought About Tears
Wednesday, January 26th, 2011Thinking about the question in the prior post about why people cry. Do we release some chemicals in our tears that are somehow “toxic” to our minds? Is that why people report that after a good cry they feel so much better?
Why Cry?
Thursday, January 13th, 2011Pheromones play a role in communication in other species, so why not in humans too? This study looked for pheromones in women’s tears and asked what their possible function could be. The summary of the study states that tears shed emotionally have a different chemical composition from tears in reaction to an irritant (like cutting on an onion). They didn’t teach that to us in medical school so it caught my attention immediately. Why would that be? It implies that emotional tears have a mysterious function and started me wondering why people cry when they are upset anyway. Notably infants cry a lot but don’t shed tears with their crying until they are several weeks or even months old. But I digress.
The study in question measured the effect of smelling a woman’s tears on sexual arousal in men. I can’t imagine why they thought of asking this question, but they did. The control substance for the study was some saline that had been trickled down the cheeks of the women to pick up the scent of any perfume or skin cream etc. They measured sexual arousal by physiological factors such as heart rate, testosterone level and skin temperature. They also inferred it from how the men rated the attractiveness of pictures of women’s faces which seems like a rather indirect measure of arousal. The best measure that they used was looking at how intensely brain regions lit up in a specialized brain scan when the men were shown erotic images. There was a distinct decrease if the men had been exposed to the tears first.
What possible role could there be for this unidentified substance in a woman’s tears that decreases the tendency for men to be sexually aroused? I am stumped. Ideas, anyone?
