The Nose Knows, but it isn't telling

According to an article in the New York Times (2009), human women's brains respond differently to sweat samples from sexually aroused men than unaroused men.* The women, however, don't report noticing any difference, so this reaction appears to be unconscious. The study (Zhou & Chen, 2008) scanned women using fMRI as they were asked to rate scent samples for intensity and pleasantness. The samples were obtained from men's armpits while watching either an erotic film or a neutral one. This study is unlike other studies we've looked at (e.g. Rantala et al, 2006) in that it did not rely on self-report exclusively to judge women's reactions.

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So, to start with a caveat: I can not make any conclusions about what my brain is doing on a subconscious level. I hope this is obvious, but I feel like it bears repeating. I was disappointed, but not surprised, to find no studies about men reacting to women's sweat. There is at least one study about women reacting to women's sweat, which I'll definitely want to look at more closely later (Berglund et al, 2006). I suspect three reasons for the lack of gender parity in these studies:

1. The general bias towards studying what makes women like men, as complained about last week (2/11/09)
2. The fact that women tend to have more sensitive sense of smell (2/7/07)
3. The fact that men have a stronger smell than women (9/17/07)

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