Chemical communication and social cognition: Principles and clinical applications

人类的化学特征提供了关于永久和短暂的生理和心理状况的各种信息。在这里，有人提出明显的社交技能可以缓解化学社会感知，从而有助于社会互动。该项目是第一个显示社会融合和社会化学感觉能力之间直接联系的方法。这种联系被认为具有临床意义，并有助于解释精神分裂症或分裂型患者的社会缺陷行为和经历。将进行两项研究。第一项研究将调查拥有或大或小社交网络（如“社交网络指数”SNI所示）的健康个体。预期SNI值高的参与者比SNI值低的参与者更有效地使用社会化学信号作为社会信息的来源。因变量将包括注意相关和注意前社会知觉的指标。此外，化学社会知觉的表现与视觉社会知觉的表现存在差异。一个辅助假设用于调查具有明显社交技能的个体是否对常见（非社交）气味也表现出更好的感知表现。第二项研究将以精神分裂症和精神分裂型为重点，探讨化学社会交往对社会行为影响的临床相关性。预计申请的项目将成为对迄今为止发表的关于人类化学通讯的个人发现进行实质性重组的基础，并为该主题提供一个新的理论（进化理论）框架。

The chemical profile of humans delivers various information about permanent and transient physiological and psychological conditions. Here, it is proposed that pronounced social skills ease chemical social perception, hence aiding social interaction. The project is the first approach to show a direct connection between social integration and social chemosensory competencies. This connection is considered to have clinical relevance, and should help to explain socially deficient behavior and experience in individuals suffering from schizophrenia or schizotypy.Two studies will be conducted. The first study will examine healthy individuals with either a large or a small social network (as indicated by the "social network index", SNI). It is expected that participants with a high SNI as compared to participants with a low SNI use social chemosignals as a source of social information more effectively. Dependent variables will include indicators of both attention-related and pre-attentive social perception. Furthermore, performance in chemical social perception will be differentially compared to performance in visual social perception. An auxiliary hypothesis serves to investigate whether individuals with pronounced social skills show an improved perceptual performance for common (non-social) odors as well. Focusing schizophrenia and schizotypy, the second study will demonstrate the clinical relevance of chemical social communication’s impact on social behavior.It is expected that the applied for project will form the basis for substantially reorganizing the individual findings on chemical communication in humans published so far, and for a new theoretical (evolutionary theories) framework of this topic.