Social chemosignaling is a part of human behavior, but how chemosignals transfer from one individ... more Social chemosignaling is a part of human behavior, but how chemosignals transfer from one individual to another is unknown. In turn, humans greet each other with handshakes, but the functional antecedents of this behavior remain unclear. To ask whether handshakes are used to sample conspecific social chemosignals, we covertly filmed 271 subjects within a structured greeting event either with or without a handshake. We found that humans often sniff their own hands, and selectively increase this behavior after handshake. After handshakes within gender, subjects increased sniffing of their own right shaking hand by more than 100%. In contrast, after handshakes across gender, subjects increased sniffing of their own left non-shaking hand by more than 100%. Tainting participants with unnoticed odors significantly altered the effects, thus verifying their olfactory nature. Thus, handshaking may functionally serve active yet subliminal social chemosignaling, which likely plays a large role in ongoing human behavior.
The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, Jan 12, 2014
Recent findings suggest that novel associations can be learned during sleep. However, whether ass... more Recent findings suggest that novel associations can be learned during sleep. However, whether associative learning during sleep can alter later waking behavior and whether such behavioral changes last for minutes, hours, or days remain unknown. We tested the hypothesis that olfactory aversive conditioning during sleep will alter cigarette-smoking behavior during ensuing wakefulness. A total of 66 human subjects wishing to quit smoking participated in the study (23 females; mean age, 28.7 ± 5.2 years). Subjects completed a daily smoking diary detailing the number of cigarettes smoked during 7 d before and following a 1 d or night protocol of conditioning between cigarette odor and profoundly unpleasant odors. We observed significant reductions in the number of cigarettes smoked following olfactory aversive conditioning during stage 2 and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep but not following aversive conditioning during wakefulness (p < 0.05). Moreover, the reduction in smoking followin...
Social chemosignaling is a part of human behavior, but how chemosignals transfer from one individ... more Social chemosignaling is a part of human behavior, but how chemosignals transfer from one individual to another is unknown. In turn, humans greet each other with handshakes, but the functional antecedents of this behavior remain unclear. To ask whether handshakes are used to sample conspecific social chemosignals, we covertly filmed 271 subjects within a structured greeting event either with or without a handshake. We found that humans often sniff their own hands, and selectively increase this behavior after handshake. After handshakes within gender, subjects increased sniffing of their own right shaking hand by more than 100%. In contrast, after handshakes across gender, subjects increased sniffing of their own left non-shaking hand by more than 100%. Tainting participants with unnoticed odors significantly altered the effects, thus verifying their olfactory nature. Thus, handshaking may functionally serve active yet subliminal social chemosignaling, which likely plays a large role in ongoing human behavior.
In the encoding of narrative episodes, the hippocampus exhibits memory-predictive activity time-l... more In the encoding of narrative episodes, the hippocampus exhibits memory-predictive activity time-locked to stimulus offset. In real life, however, events usually occur in succession, raising the question of how the immediate offline processing of one event is affected by presentation of another. To address this issue, participants were presented with brief narrative movie clips in a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner. Each clip was immediately followed by an additional, unrelated, clip; by a visually scrambled clip with background auditory noises; or by a fixation cross. Memory for the gist of the clips was tested outside the scanner in a cued-recall test 20 min after termination of the study session. The hippocampus responded at the offset of each clip, even when a second clip was presented in immediate succession, suggesting that the hippocampus processes each brief clip as a discrete event. Presentation of a second narrative clip, and to a lesser degree of a scrambled c...
Social chemosignaling is a part of human behavior, but how chemosignals transfer from one individ... more Social chemosignaling is a part of human behavior, but how chemosignals transfer from one individual to another is unknown. In turn, humans greet each other with handshakes, but the functional antecedents of this behavior remain unclear. To ask whether handshakes are used to sample conspecific social chemosignals, we covertly filmed 271 subjects within a structured greeting event either with or without a handshake. We found that humans often sniff their own hands, and selectively increase this behavior after handshake. After handshakes within gender, subjects increased sniffing of their own right shaking hand by more than 100%. In contrast, after handshakes across gender, subjects increased sniffing of their own left non-shaking hand by more than 100%. Tainting participants with unnoticed odors significantly altered the effects, thus verifying their olfactory nature. Thus, handshaking may functionally serve active yet subliminal social chemosignaling, which likely plays a large role in ongoing human behavior.
The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, Jan 12, 2014
Recent findings suggest that novel associations can be learned during sleep. However, whether ass... more Recent findings suggest that novel associations can be learned during sleep. However, whether associative learning during sleep can alter later waking behavior and whether such behavioral changes last for minutes, hours, or days remain unknown. We tested the hypothesis that olfactory aversive conditioning during sleep will alter cigarette-smoking behavior during ensuing wakefulness. A total of 66 human subjects wishing to quit smoking participated in the study (23 females; mean age, 28.7 ± 5.2 years). Subjects completed a daily smoking diary detailing the number of cigarettes smoked during 7 d before and following a 1 d or night protocol of conditioning between cigarette odor and profoundly unpleasant odors. We observed significant reductions in the number of cigarettes smoked following olfactory aversive conditioning during stage 2 and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep but not following aversive conditioning during wakefulness (p < 0.05). Moreover, the reduction in smoking followin...
Social chemosignaling is a part of human behavior, but how chemosignals transfer from one individ... more Social chemosignaling is a part of human behavior, but how chemosignals transfer from one individual to another is unknown. In turn, humans greet each other with handshakes, but the functional antecedents of this behavior remain unclear. To ask whether handshakes are used to sample conspecific social chemosignals, we covertly filmed 271 subjects within a structured greeting event either with or without a handshake. We found that humans often sniff their own hands, and selectively increase this behavior after handshake. After handshakes within gender, subjects increased sniffing of their own right shaking hand by more than 100%. In contrast, after handshakes across gender, subjects increased sniffing of their own left non-shaking hand by more than 100%. Tainting participants with unnoticed odors significantly altered the effects, thus verifying their olfactory nature. Thus, handshaking may functionally serve active yet subliminal social chemosignaling, which likely plays a large role in ongoing human behavior.
In the encoding of narrative episodes, the hippocampus exhibits memory-predictive activity time-l... more In the encoding of narrative episodes, the hippocampus exhibits memory-predictive activity time-locked to stimulus offset. In real life, however, events usually occur in succession, raising the question of how the immediate offline processing of one event is affected by presentation of another. To address this issue, participants were presented with brief narrative movie clips in a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner. Each clip was immediately followed by an additional, unrelated, clip; by a visually scrambled clip with background auditory noises; or by a fixation cross. Memory for the gist of the clips was tested outside the scanner in a cued-recall test 20 min after termination of the study session. The hippocampus responded at the offset of each clip, even when a second clip was presented in immediate succession, suggesting that the hippocampus processes each brief clip as a discrete event. Presentation of a second narrative clip, and to a lesser degree of a scrambled c...
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