Human Pheromones| Scent of Eros| Unsolicited Video| Audio interview

Scent of Eros products unsolicited 5-minute video testimony and twin test

Scent of Eros products are not aphrodisiacs despite their very positive representation in this promotional video, which was produced without my knowledge.

Audio interview with James V. Kohl

Scent of Eros products have a very positive influence on other people, which is a great thing to promote.  It’s just best not to get too carried away by claims of magical effects.

Study results: Human pheromones influence human behavior

Dr. Richard L. Doty’s claim that pheromones in mammals are a myth is again falsified by the presentation of data from a study of student women.  As always, I welcome challenges to our study design, constructive criticisms on our results, and comments on biologically based animal models of behavior that do not incorporate pheromones.  My question to Dr. Doty is:  If mammalian pheromones don’t exist, what shall we call the human pheromones that elicit behavioral affects?

Association for Chemoreception Sciences XXXIII April 13-17, 2011      Tradewinds Island Grand St. Pete Beach, Florida 

#P301 POSTER SESSION VI: OLFACTION: PERIPHERY; OLFACTORY CNS; PSYCHOPHYSICS; HUMAN CHEMICAL SIGNALING

Human Pheromones, Epigenetics, Physiology, and the Development of Animal Behavior

James V Kohl, Stone Independent Research, Inc. Phoenix , NY , USA

Linda C Kelahan, Heather Hoffmann, Knox College/Psychology Galesberg , IL , USA

Androsterone, as used here, smells like fresh sweat. It is an individual human male-specific and somewhat primate-specific part of a mixture of axillary chemical secretions that contain androstenol, which influences levels of luteinizing hormone (LH) and mood in women. LH is a hormonal measure of diet dependent sexual maturity and fertility, which is influenced by mammalian pheromones. Mammalian conditioning paradigms suggest that androstenol conditions hormonal effects in females, which may be unconsciously associated with behavioral affects of androsterone in women. We evaluated individual video-taped fifteen-minute interactions of fourteen women with fertile phase levels of LH during a cooperative task. During the task, our male accomplice wore either a standardized androstenol / androsterone mixture diluted in propylene glycol, or just the diluent — with sandalwood odor added to keep him blind to his condition. (more…)

Genes, neuroanatomy, thoughts, and behavior

It all starts with gene activation by sensory stimuli from the environment, a biological fact that is downplayed in this otherwise fantastic representation of what’s known about epigenetic influences and their effects on the brain, which leads to their affects on behavior. The 3-minute video is entertaining and informative; the article even more so. Watch, read, learn!

How the Brain’s Wiring Forms Thoughts and Emotions

New techniques, including advances in brain scans, are helping to reveal the hidden anatomy of brain wiring and giving scientists a new understanding of how thoughts, memories and emotions are formed. WSJ’s Robert Lee Hotz reports.

Probing the Brain’s Mysteries

New Research Seeks to Map Billions of Neural Links That Make the Mind Work

“It may be the first new perspective on neuroanatomy in 100 years,” “That is a million times more connections than the genome has letters of DNA,” said computational neuroscientist

Human pheromones: the chemistry of love

This article from the New York Times is a timely prequel to a more technical representation of cause and effect that is “in press” for the open access journal Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology.

Fruit flies and Love

“We may respond to the same honeyed aromas that make fruit flies amorous, so chemists include them in perfumes.”

Human pheromones, pharmacogenomics, psychologists, and litigation (558 words)

On January 1, 2012, in discussion on the psychiatry research yahoo group, I wrote: “… there is nothing inherently rewarding about dopamine, so why are behaviorists praying to a dopaminergic god of operant conditioning?”

The same can be asked about serotonin, oxytocin, and other hormones / neurotransmitters that are commonly proposed as causes of human behaviors. The link between oxytocin and “bonding” associated with love is perhaps the most commonly proposed cause and effect relationship. But love is profoundly social. How could a hormone, like oxytocin, that has no inherent social value cause anyone to think, believe, or feel like they are in love? It can’t!

I will now try again to clarify my point about the FDA Critical Path Initiative and the gene, cell, tissue, organ, organ system pathway, which I have detailed. The issue is how pharmacogenomics establishes the relative salience of sensory stimuli associated with behavior.

It is important for psychologists to understand how salience is established because treatment outcomes may sometimes depend on that understanding. (more…)

Scientists recreate evolution of complexity using ‘molecular time travel’

“Much of what living cells do is carried out by “molecular machines” – physical complexes of specialized proteins working together to carry out some biological function. How the minute steps of evolution produced these constructions has long puzzled scientists, and provided a favorite target for creationists.”

http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-scientists-recreate-evolution-complexity-molecular.html

My comment:

Groups of molecules that happen to stick are credited with tinkering, degradation, and good luck during evolution. Does that mean each of our ancestors as far back as single-celled organisms was preserved because they helped our other ancestors to survive? If so, I have a problem with what appears to be a one-way model. For example, how does the accumulation of simple, degenerative changes over long periods of times cause speciation, which incorporates many of the complex molecular machines present in organisms today? I think the accumulation of simple, degenerative changes in different organisms must stop for one species to establish its ecological niche but I don’t see any explanation for stop-and-start degenerative changes. That’s why one-way models of evolved complexity don’t work for me, but especially when the “one way” is via degradation. For contrast, Lynch et al find no evidence for stepwise evolution.

“There is a broad consensus that many of the genetic changes underlying the evolution of morphology occur by the stepwise modification of individual pre-existing cis-regulatory element modules5,6,29. However, it is questionable whether the origin of complex novelties—such as the origin of new cell types, which involves the recruitment of hundreds of genes—can be achieved by these small-scale changes7,29.”

The importance of the evolved mammalian placenta to human behavior cannot be overstated. The chemical communication that occurs in utero between mother and child probably are responsible for the genetically predisposed mother-infant bond, which sets the post-natal stage for the development of differences in adult behavior. I will have more to say about this in a follow-up post.

Mapping the human genome in 3-D

Scientists create first 3-D map of human genome

My comment: Food odors and social odors have direct effects on gene activation. Is it likely that food odors up-regulate and social odors down-regulate gene expression responsible for speciation and species-specific behaviors? If so, the direct effect of food odors and social odors on signalling pathways would make chemical cues as important to the understanding of human behavior as they are to the understanding of behavior in every other species on the planet. Wouldn’t it?

The Perversion of Science by Evolutionary Psychologists

In discussion of domain-specific modules, which I continue to insist do not exist, on Sunday, December 25^th, 2011, I was asked by a member of the evolutionary-psychology yahoo group:

“…how many times has your model been cited?

My model refutes the existence of domain-specific modules. See for example: scholar.google.com (more…)

Human Pheromones: An Accurate Conceptualization

This link; another link to The Scent of Eros: Mysteries of Odor in Human Sexuality; and the excerpts below, provide a concise summary of essential points, statements, and facts to be found in the book I co-authored with Robert T. Francoeur. The précis was published in the online journal “Psycoloquy” on October 29, 1995. It represents what may be the first permanently available on-line indicator of my interest in human pheromones and also indicates my first attempt to teach others about the significance of odor in the development of human behavior. In 1996, I co-authored From fertilization to adult sexual behavior, which further extended the concept of human pheromones.

In 2001, I co-authored Human pheromones: integrating neuroendocrinology and ethology, which referenced the detailed reciprocity in olfactory-genetic-neuronal-hormonal-behavioral relationships that appear to link the nature and nurture of human sexuality and the influence of sensory stimuli, especially chemosensory stimuli, on human sexuality. In 2001, a ground-breaking report by the National Academies of Science’s Institute of Medicine concluded that the study of sex differences could lead to significant improvements in health for both women and men (Wizemann & Pardue, 2001). The report recommended that research on sex differences be conducted at every level—gene, cell, tissue, organ, and organism—and that sex differences be studied at every stage of life, from conception through death (Marts & Resnick, 2007). As indicated in Sex Differences and the FDA Critical Path Initiative one of the most extraordinary changes over the last few years is the ability to globally analyze biological systems, and to use this global analysis in the development of therapeutic agents designed with full considerations for sex differences in their effects, and their side-effects. In 2007, I published The Mind’s Eyes: Human pheromones, neuroscience, and male sexual preferences as a book chapter in the Handbook of the Evolution of Human Sexuality after its 2006 publication in the Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality. In 2012, I expect to publish an article in Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology that links human pheromones and food odors to their epigenetic influences on the socioaffective nature of evolved behaviors via the same gene, cell, tissue, organ, organ system pathway I first detailed in The Scent of Eros: Mysteries of Odor in Human Sexuality. The recurring theme of this pathway, which links the social environment to the development of behavior in every species, is as important today as it was when I first began my research. I am attempting to make this perfectly clear. (more…)

Cause and effect in biology

Cause and Effect in Biology Revisited: Is Mayr’s Proximate-Ultimate Dichotomy Still Useful?

Abstract (full text requires a subscription)

Fifty years ago, Ernst Mayr published a hugely influential paper on the nature of causation in biology, in which he distinguished between proximate and ultimate causes. Mayr equated proximate causation with immediate factors (for example, physiology) and ultimate causation with evolutionary explanations (for example, natural selection). He argued that proximate and ultimate causes addressed different questions and were not alternatives. Mayr’s account of causation remains widely accepted today, with both positive and negative ramifications. Several current debates in biology (for example, over evolution and development, niche construction, cooperation, and the evolution of language) are linked by a common axis of acceptance/rejection of Mayr’s model of causation. We argue that Mayr’s formulation has acted to stabilize the dominant evolutionary paradigm against change but may now hamper progress in the biological sciences.

My comment accepted after submission on Fri, 12/16/2011 – 08:47:

From the perspective of molecular biology it seems most likely that the causal link between food acquisition and further developmental effects on all organisms is the most basic of all considerations. Organisms that lack sufficient nutrition do not reproduce. Those that reproduce use chemical signals to communicate self / non-self differences. The chemical signals are derived from successful metabolism of food. This makes chemical signals from food and from conspecifics the most important of all signals involved in biologically based cause and effect. The reciprocity, which requires food acquisition prior to reproduction and species survival, is correctly derived from what is already known about the epigenetic effects of chemical signals from food sources and from conspecifics, and their direct effect on the levels of biological organization that link them to the genes and behavior across species.