Search results for "Chemoreceptor Cells"
showing 4 items of 14 documents
A putative social chemosignal elicits faster cortical responses than perceptually similar odorants.
2006
Social chemosignals, so-called pheromones, have recently attracted much attention in that effects on women's psychophysiology and cortical processing have been reported. We here tested the hypothesis that the human brain would process a putative social chemosignal, the endogenous steroid endrostadienone, faster than other odorants with perceptually matched intensity and hedonic characteristics. Chemosensory event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded in healthy women. ERP analyses indicate that androstadienone was processed significantly faster than the control odorants. Androstadienone elicited shorter latencies for all recorded ERP components but most so for the late positivity. This fin…
Sexual pheromones and the evolution of the reward system of the brain: the chemosensory function of the amygdala.
2008
The amygdala of all tetrapod vertebrates receives direct projections from the main and accessory olfactory bulbs, and the strong similarities in the organization of these projections suggest that they have undergone a very conservative evolution. However, current ideas about the function of the amygdala do not pay sufficient attention to its chemosensory role, but only view it as the core of the emotional brain. In this study, we propose that both roles of the amygdala are intimately linked since the amygdala is actually involved in mediating emotional responses to chemical signals. The amygdala is the only structure in the brain receiving pheromonal information directly from the accessory …
Attracted or repelled?--a matter of two neurons, one pheromone binding protein, and a chiral center.
1998
Abstract Two species of scarab beetles, the Osaka beetle (Anomala osakana) and the Japanese beetle (Popillia japonica), utilize the opposite enantiomers of japonilure, (Z)-5-(1-decenyl)oxacyclopentan-2-one, as their sex pheromones. Each species produces only one of the enantiomers that functions as its own sex pheromone and as a very strong behavioral antagonist for the other species. Using an integrated approach we tested whether the discrimination of these two opposite signals is due to selective filtering by pheromone binding proteins or whether it originates in the specificity of ligand–receptor interactions. We found that the antennae of each of these two scarab species contain only a …
Pheromone-binding proteins of scarab beetles.
1998
: We have characterized Pheromone binding proteins (PBPs) present in the antennae of several species of scarab beetles. In most cases there was only one class of PBP, which was expressed in both sexes. Both Anomala osakana and Popillia japonica possess a single PBP, highly homologous to each other. In each species the same PBP seems to recognize both enantiomers of japonilure, which have opposite biological functions, i.e., the sex Pheromone and the behavioral antagonist (stop signal). The purified PBP of A. osakana binds both enantiomers apparently with the same low affinity. Unexpectedly, these ligands were bound by moth PBPs, which utilize Pheromones with unrelated structures. These find…