8 documents found, page 1 of 1
Body odors (even when masked) make you more emotional: behavioral and neural in...
Cecchetto, Cinzia; Lancini, Elisa; Bueti, Domenica; Rumiati, Raffaella Ida; Parma, ValentinaMorality evolved within specific social contexts that are argued to shape moral choices. In turn, moral choices are hypothesized to be affected by body odors as they powerfully convey socially-relevant information. We thus investigated the neural underpinnings of the possible body odors effect on the participants' decisions. In an fMRI study we presented to healthy individuals 64 moral dilemmas divided in incon...
Ethnic influences on the perceptual properties of human chemosignals
Parma, Valentina; Redolfi, Nelly; Alho, Laura; Rocha, Marta; Ferreira, Jacqueline; Silva, Carlos Fernandes da; Soares, Sandra C.Individuals of African and Caucasian descent show different chemical signatures in their body odors (BO). Does such biological difference have a perceptual correlate? We tested BO donors and raters of Afro-Portuguese (AP) and Caucasian (C) descent to investigate whether olfactory ratings reveal an ethnic bias and whether olfactory ethnic discrimination is possible. C (vs. AP) women rated the C BO as more pleasa...
A hierarchical-drift diffusion model of the roles of hunger, caloric density an...
Garlasco, P.; Osimo, S.A.; Rumiati, Raffaella Ida; Parma, ValentinaDecisions based on affectively relevant stimuli, such as food items, hardly follow strictly rational rules. Being hungry, the food's caloric density, and the subjective valence attributed to various foods are known factors that modulate food choices. Yet, how these factors relatively and altogether contribute to the food choice process is still unknown. In this study, we showed 16 healthy young adults low- and ...
The scent of the other women: Body odor-induced behavioral and physiological ef...
Mutic, Smiljana; Freiherr, Jessica; Cavazzana, Annachiara; Rocha, Marta; Soares, Sandra C.; Parma, ValentinaIn body odor research, the interaction of female donors and receivers is scarcely investigated. With the aim to investigate effects of female body odor in a competitive context, we tested 51 women divided into two groups (i.e., a competitive and a non-competitive group, based on verbal instructions). Between groups, we explored whether female body odor exposure (vs. masker odor) modulates emotion categorization...
Women smelling men's masked body odors show enhanced harm aversion in moral dil...
Cecchetto, Cinzia; Lancinni, Elisa; Rumiati, Raffaella Ida; Parma, ValentinaAmong the most unnoticeable stimuli providing social information, body odors are powerful social tools that can modulate behavioral and neural processing. It has recently been shown that body odors can affect moral decision-making, by increasing the activations in neural areas processing social and emotional information during the decision process. The aim of the present study was twofold: 1) to test whether bo...
Sex differences in body ownership in adults with autism spectrum disorder
Guerra, Silvia; Spoto, Andrea; Castiello, Umberto; Parma, ValentinaA strong male prevalence has been observed in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) since its definition, but the behavioral manifestations of sex disparity have yet to be clarified. Here, we investigate sex differences in the perception of the Numbness Illusion (NI), a procedure based on a tactile conflict, in adults with ASD and with typical development. We aim to assess if women and men with ASD perceive NI-depende...
The effects of emotional visual context on the encoding and retrieval of body o...
Parma, Valentina; Macedo, Stephanie; Rocha, Marta; Alho, Laura; Ferreira, Jacqueline; Soares, Sandra Cristina de OliveiraConditions during information encoding and retrieval are known to influence the sensory material stored and its recapitulation. However, little is known about such processes in olfaction. Here, we capitalized on the uniqueness of body odors (BOs) which, similar to fingerprints, allow for the identification of a specific person, by associating their presentation to a negative or a neutral emotional context. One ...
Emotional body odors as context: Effects on cardiac and subjective responses
Ferreira, Jacqueline; Parma, Valentina; Alho, Laura; Silva, Carlos Fernandes da; Soares, Sandra Cristina de OliveiraMany studies have indicated that the chemical cues from body odors (BOs) of donors experiencing negative emotions can influence the psychophysiological and behavioral response of the observers. However, these olfactory cues have been used mainly as contextual information for processing visual stimuli. Here, for the first time, we evaluate how emotional BO affects the emotional tone of a subsequent BO message. A...