title: Human tears contain a chemosignal.
abstract: Emotional tearing is a poorly understood behavior that is considered uniquely human. In mice, tears serve as a chemosignal. We therefore hypothesized that human tears may similarly serve a chemosignaling function. We found that merely sniffing negative-emotion-related odorless tears obtained from women donors induced reductions in sexual appeal attributed by men to pictures of women's faces. Moreover, after sniffing such tears, men experienced reduced self-rated sexual arousal, reduced physiological measures of arousal, and reduced levels of testosterone. Finally, functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed that sniffing women's tears selectively reduced activity in brain substrates of sexual arousal in men.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
authors.forename: Shani
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gelstein
authors.forename: Yaara
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yeshurun
authors.forename: Liron
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Rozenkrantz
authors.forename: Sagit
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shushan
authors.forename: Idan
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Frumin
authors.forename: Yehudah
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Roth
authors.forename: Noam
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Sobel
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D001143:Arousal; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D004311:Double-Blind Method; D004644:Emotions; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007031:Hypothalamus / Q000502:physiology; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009812:Odorants; D049049:Pheromones, Human / Q000032:analysis*; D012463:Saliva / Q000737:chemistry; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D012725:Sexual Behavior; D012903:Smell; D013666:Tears / Q000737:chemistry*; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D013739:Testosterone / Q000032:analysis*; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D049049:Pheromones, Human; D013739:Testosterone