Chemical communication in humans

Tristram Wyatt is interested in how animals of all kinds use chemical communication. He studies the patterns of pheromone evolution, at every level from genes, neural circuits, to behaviour, in both vertebrates and invertebrates. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford and an emeritus fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford. He did his PhD in animal behaviour at the University of Cambridge. His Cambridge University Press book on pheromones and animal behaviour, aimed at a wide scientific audience, won the Royal Society of Biology’s prize for the Best Postgraduate Textbook in 2014. His book Animal behaviour: A Very Short Introduction was published by Oxford University Press in 2017.

Professor John A Pickett is originally an organic chemist (BSc 1967, PhD 1971, DSc 1993) who has gained worldwide recognition, with many honours and awards to his name, for his investigations into volatile natural products that affect the behaviour and development of animals and other organisms (semiochemicals).  He is a world authority on semiochemicals in insect behaviour and plays a leading rôle in the move away from the traditional use of wide-spectrum pesticides to more precise control through compounds targeted against specific pests at critical stages in their life cycles.  Recent practical successes include a programme for controlling stem borer pests and striga weeds in Africa, where thousands of subsistence farmers have already adopted systems for exploiting the natural product chemicals of certain companion crops.  In 1976, John moved to Rothamsted Research to lead a team working on new methods of pest control.  He headed the Department of Biological Chemistry there from 1984-2010, and now holds the first Michael Elliott Distinguished Research Fellowship at Rothamsted.  As well as fulfilling this prestigious new role, he continues to lead research into the field of chemical ecology.

Drea earned a BS in Zoology from the University of Maryland, and both a MA and PhD in Psychobiology from Emory University, as a Guggenheim fellow. Following a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Physiology at Morehouse School of Medicine, Drea continued as a NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology and Lecturer in Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She began her faculty position at Duke University in 1999, where along with studies of brown hyenas in Namibia, mandrills in Gabon, and meerkats in South Africa, Drea has been researching various species of strepsirrhine primates, both at the Duke Lemur Center and in Madagascar. Her special focus over the last 30 years has been on gaining a better understanding of reproductive and social behavior, communication, and the mechanisms underlying exceptional, female-dominant species.

Thomas Hummel does research in the chemosensory systems at the Smell and Taste Clinic of the Department of Otorhinolaryngology of the “Technische Universität” Dresden in Germany. This includes an olfactory/gustatory dysfunction clinic also involving patients with neurodegenerative causes of olfactory loss, and investigations in the intranasal trigeminal system. Investigations in these areas are performed using electrophysiological (olfactory event-related potentials, recordings from the mucosa of the nasal cavity), psychophysical, and imaging techniques (PET, FMRI). Dr Hummel received his medical education in at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. There, he also went through a special program in Pharmacology and Toxicology (“Habilitation”) guided by Dr Kobal. As a post-doc he stayed in 1994 at the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, USA. Further, from 1997 to 1998 he was Assistant Professor at the Department of Otorhinolaryngology of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA guided by Dr Doty. He is author/co-author of more than 550 peer-reviewed publications, more than 50 reviews, over 50 chapters and editor of three books.

Benoist Schaal was trained in neuroscience, ethology and anthropology at Universities of Strasbourg and Besançon. Affiliated with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, he studies how early sensory experience shapes long-term perception, learning and preferences in a variety of species (humans, rabbits, sheep and mice). From 2002–2009, he directed the Centre for Smell and Taste Science in Dijon, France. There, he leads a research group focusing on the olfactory regulations of adaptive behaviour in developing mammals. His current interests embrace the way organisms use chemosensory cues and signals to organise and fine-tune their affects, knowledge, and behaviour at both individual and social levels. He edited Smell Function in Children: Combining Perspectives (1997, PUF, Paris), and co-edited Olfaction, Taste, and Cognition (2003, Cambridge University Press, New York), Olfactory Cognition (2012, Benjamin, Amsterdam), Odeurs et émotions (2013, Dijon Univ Press, Dijon) and Applied Olfactory Cognition (2014, Frontiers, Lausanne).

Dr Croy and her group use psychophysical methods as well as functional and structural imaging techniques to investigate the impact of sensory perception on mental health. One of the priorities is investigation of chemosensory communication in terms of interpersonal behavior. Studying healthy controls as well as dysosmic patients, the group repeatedly found effects of olfactory function on sexual experience. Dr Croy and her group furthermore observed effects of HLA on body odor perception and mate choice in adults. Using this paradigm, Dr Croy currently examines how HLA similarity moderates kin recognition and how mothers perceive the body odor of their own and other infants.

Dr Havlíček's main research interest is in evolutionary aspects of social chemoperception. His group studies how environmental (diet), genetical (MHC) and cultural (fragrances) factors influence impression formation, primarily in mating and competitive contexts, within the theoretical frameworks of signalling, sexual selection and dual inheritance theory. His interest further includes romantic relationship formation and interaction of biological and cultural evolution. His background is in biology and anthropology. He received his PhD (2004) from Charles University, Prague. Currently, he works as Associate Professor at the Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague and as the Senior Researcher in the National Institute of Mental Health, Klecany, Czech Republic.

Camille Ferdenzi is a CNRS researcher based at the Lyon Neuroscience Research Centre, (France), where she conducts research in psychology of human olfaction. After a PhD on developmental and inter-individual differences in children’s olfactory abilities (Centre for Taste and Feeding Behaviour, Dijon, France), she led projects on olfactory, facial and vocal determinants of human attractiveness during two postdoctoral fellowships (University of Liverpool, UK, and Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences, Switzerland). She joined the Lyon Neuroscience Research Centre in 2013 where she has been working on the implications of odours in human affective life and social interactions, using verbal, psychophysical and neurophysiological approaches. She is particularly interested in chemical communication, whereby information about people’s emotional states and individual characteristics that are relevant to partner choice can be conveyed through their body odour. She pays particular attention to variations of olfactory perception between individuals, especially as a function of sex or culture.

Andreas Natsch studied at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and got his PhD in environmental microbiology in 1996. After postdoctoral studies in molecular biology at the Centro Nacional de Biotecnologia in Madrid in 1997, he moved to the research department of the Fragrance manufacturer Givaudan in 1998. Here he elucidated the biochemical mechanisms of human body odor formation in order to design new deodorant ingredients. In parallel he developed novel formulations, eg for preservation of cosmetic products without classical preservatives. Since 2008, the research focus includes the development and implemention of in vitro assays to study toxicological risks without using animal testing. This work led to the develop-ment of the KeratinoSens™ assay to study allergens now globally adopted by the OECD. In the current position as Senior Research Fellow he leads the in vitro molecular screening group to evaluate risks and bioactivity of novel ingredients early in the development pipeline.

Bettina M Pause (PhD) works as a Professor for Biological and Social Psychology at the Heinrich-Heine-University, Duesseldorf, Germany. Her university classes include topics of Biological, Abnormal, General, Diagnostic and Social Psychology. Her scientific work focuses the physiological underpinnings of chemical communication of emotions in humans, but also expands to chemosensory related mate choice and olfactory cognition. She was among the first to show that in humans, emotions are chemically contagious. Further areas of her research include olfactory and related emotional dysfunctions in patients with mental disorders. Her main research methods are psychophysics, psychophysiology, functional brain imaging, psychoneuroendocrinology, and behavioural economics. Bettina Pauses’ work has been supported by external funding agencies with about one million euros. She published about 100 scientific articles, most of them representing original research studies.

Jasper de Groot (1989) completed his Research Master’s in Social & Health Psychology at Utrecht University, Utrecht, NL (with distinction), and went on to obtain a Research Talent Grant (from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research) to conduct his 3-year PhD research on “emotional chemosignalling”, the human capacity to communicate emotions from one to another via body odour. After his PhD (2015, with distinction), he became a postdoc at Utrecht University. On a prestigious Niels Stensen Fellowship, he then went to the University of Pennsylvania (2017, Philadelphia, USA) to study the neural underpinnings of fear odour communication with professor Jay Gottfried, PhD, MD. Now, he is back in Utrecht on another innovation grant (Veni, NWO) to delve into the chemical foundations of fear odour. In his endeavour to understand human olfactory communication, he also collaborated with industry (Unilever), and he shares knowledge with broad audiences, including patient populations (anosmics).

Mats J Olsson is a Professor of Experimental Psychology and Head of Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet. His research covers different aspects of human olfaction in the fields of psychophysics, perception and cognition. More recently body odour has been of particular interest and he has lately targeted body odour during systemic inflammation. The results so far indicate that we give off an aversive odour cue soon after experimental induction of inflammation that motivates an avoidance behaviour of others as a first line defence against disease. Moreover, odorous disease cues are also able to trigger the immune system in preparation for a pathogenic attack. Altogether these results support the idea of behavioural defence against disease that is more elaborated than previously known.

Craig’s initial training was in zoology. His PhD at University College London was on chemical communication in an African antelope, followed by postdoctoral research at the Institute of Zoology on odour signals and mate choice in mice. He became interested in whether and how odour might similarly be involved in human social communication, and has pursued this line of research for more than 15 years, particularly in the context of status signalling and partner choice. This work includes studies of the genetic underpinnings of odour preferences and how modern cultural practices such as use of hormonal contraception and artificial fragrances potentially disrupt cues of biological relevance. He held posts in Newcastle and Liverpool, and has been at the University of Stirling since 2010. He is currently also the President of the International Society for Human Ethology, the oldest learned society for evolutionary approaches to understanding human behaviour.

Asifa Majid is Professor of Language, Communication and Cultural Cognition at the University of York. She investigates the nature of thought both in language and outside of it by comparing diverse languages and cultures around the world. Majid has shown that while English speakers struggle to name even familiar smells, this difficulty is not universal. Majid has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and has been awarded various prizes for her work (eg, Ammodo KNAW Award, Radboud Science Award) and received a NWO VICI grant (€1.5million) to study olfactory language and cognition across cultures. She is an elected member of Academia Europaea for her contributions to linguistics, and was elected Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science in recognition of her sustained outstanding contributions to psychology.

Professor Jonathan Williams is an atmospheric chemist. He completed his BSc and PhD at the University of East Anglia, England and, after working as a postdoctoral researcher at the NOAA Aeronomy laboratory in Boulder, USA, he became a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Germany. His primary research focus is the chemistry of volatile organic compounds (VOC) in the atmosphere and he has participated in many international field campaigns on aircraft, ships and at ground stations. He is editor on several international journals, co-author of the textbook The Atmospheric Chemist´s Companion and currently adjunct Professor at the Cyprus Institute, in Cyprus. Recently Professor Williams has begun researching the VOC emitted by people and the impact of these emissions on indoor chemistry.