Babies emit smell to get aggressively loyal moms and mellow dads, according to Israeli study 

When she opened it, she saw that it was a child, a boy crying. She took pity on it and said, “This must be a Hebrew child.”  

Exodus

2:

6

(the israel bible)

November 29, 2021

4 min read

Parents of newborns will describe in detail, to anyone willing to listen, the wonder that is their baby’s smell – and they might not be in the wrong. A new study by researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot have revealed that sniffing a particular body-odor molecule excreted in abundance from the heads of newborn babies has an opposite effect on women and men. It reduces aggression in men but increases it in women. 

 

This finding is among the first to provide a direct link among human behavior, a brain mechanism and a single molecule picked up through the sense of smell. The study shows that the molecule plays an important social role – regulating aggression in adults.

 

The study, led by Dr. Eva Mishor from Prof. Noam Sobel’s research group at Weizmann’s brain sciences department and the Azrieli Institute for Human Brain Imaging and Research found that the molecule can likely be sensed by all mammals from the scalps of newborns, 

 

Moreover, the study, published today in Science Advances under the title “Sniffing the human body volatile hexadecanal blocks aggression in men but triggers aggression in women” found that the molecule affects women one way, and has the opposite effect on men. The molecule, the researchers found, decreases connectivity in parts of the brain that regulate social decision-making in women, while in men it increases this connectivity. These brain differences may underlie the different behavioral outcomes.

 

All animals excrete molecules that give off certain cues that are perceived through our olfactory faculties. Studies have shown that they can also have clear social and behavioral effects on mammals, but the scientific explanation behind how humans are affected by these social cues of chemical communication is still limited.

 

In their study, Mishor and Sobel focused on a molecule called hexadecanal (HEX) that humans release and that most mammals can sense. “We found that HEX has no perceptible odor but that when you sniff it, it affects the way you behave toward others – specifically, your aggressive responses to others,” explained Mishor.

 

HEX was previously suggested to be a “social buffering” chemosignaling agent – for example, it reduces stress in mice when excreted by their fellow cagemates – but the question of whether it plays a similar role in humans was unknown. 

 

The study used two validated scientific methods for gauging aggressive behavior in humans, the so-called “aggression paradigms” known as TAP and PSAP. The researchers used the TAP method on about 130 human participants, half of whom were exposed to HEX, and half to a control substance. The PSAP method was used on about 50 additional participants, each exposed to both HEX and the control. The goal was to see if HEX served as a chemosignaling cue that impacted aggressive behavior and associated brain mechanisms. 

 

Both methods have two stages – a provocation stage intended to frustrate participants and a response stage intended to gauge their aggression. Accordingly, the researchers created a computer game to measure the participants’ aggressive behavior. After the participants were exposed to the molecule or to the control substance, they were asked to play two sets of games against what they thought was a person but was actually a computer. 

 

The computer was annoying on purpose, goading its human playmates as a form of provocation. For example, in the first game, which required divvying up money, the computer would offer to keep most of the funds for itself. This game was followed by a second game, which allowed the humans to “punish” their questioner with a loud audio blast. This was used as a metric for gauging aggressiveness – the louder the blast, the more aggressive the participant was judged to be. 

 

Mishor found that those that were exposed to HEX exhibited different behaviors from those who were not exposed to it. However, the scientists were surprised to see that the results seemed inconsistent. 

“I am very sensitive to matters of gender, and it was very important for me to include women in our study,” notes Mishor. We tend to assume that men and women have, overall, similar brains. But when the researchers took sex into account, they discovered that the different behaviors followed a clear logic: HEX affects men and women differently. While females exposed to the molecule exhibited increased aggression in comparison to female participants in the control group, male participants behaved oppositely, and their aggression decreased. 

 

Mishor suggested an evolutionary explanation for why this molecule affects the genders differently: “Male aggression translates many times into aggression toward newborns; infanticide is a very real phenomenon in the animal kingdom. Meanwhile, female aggression usually translates into defending offspring,” she noted, explaining how the sex-differentiated outcome can help babies survive.

 

To examine this hypothesis, they reached out to researchers in Japan who had been studying babies, specifically the molecules excreted from their scalps. This led them to discover that HEX “is among the most abundant, if not the most abundant molecule in the aromatic bouquet found on a baby’s head,” Sobel mentioned. 

“Babies cannot communicate through language, so chemical communication is very important for them,” explains Sobel. “As a baby, it is in your interest to make your mom more aggressive and reduce aggressiveness in your dad,” he said.

 

To further validate their results, the researchers used the second aggression paradigm method, which allows the imaging of brain activity during the provocation and aggression stages. In this case as well a marked difference was found between men and women.

 

There is no single area in the brain associated with aggression. Rather, aggressive behavior is linked to networks of communication between different parts of our brain that regulate the way we process social cues and either abide by them or ignore them.

 

“HEX, it would seem, affects men in that there was more social regulation, their aggression was kept in check and it served as a ‘cool down’ signal for them, while in women the regulation decreased and it can be thought of as a ‘set free’ signal,” explained Mishor. In other words, the communication between the parts of the brain that are in charge of social regulation, and thus help keep aggression in check, differs in men and women.

 

“Like all mammals, humans sniff themselves and each other all the time,” explains Sobel. Now, perhaps we know the outcome of sniffing newborns and have a better understanding of the mechanisms involved, and of its possible evolutionary role.

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