Body odor sensory-chemical profiling - from newborns to adults

发育伴随着一系列影响生理、行为和认知的过程。最近的证据表明，人类能够从体味中提取关于另一个人的年龄或荷尔蒙状况的信息。这表明，体味的化学感觉线索会受到系统性发育变化的影响。因此，在拟议的项目中，我们的目标是a)评估四个不同年龄段(婴儿、青春期前、青春期和青春期后儿童)体味的化学成分，b)将已识别的化学成分与个体的荷尔蒙状况联系起来，以及c)评估体味的化学成分如何调节父母对孩子体味的感知。因此，拟议的项目将开始澄清人类化学感觉交流的分子基础，并开始将其与体味在父母-婴儿-关系中的作用联系起来。在该项目的第一阶段内，已经建立了感官分析方法，现在应该采用这些方法来调查更多的体味样本，以实现该项目的目标。值得注意的是，已建立的方法一方面将允许深入表征体臭样本的气味成分，另一方面将允许深入表征挥发性模式。目标物质已经定义，并将被量化，以调查气味捐赠者的年龄和激素状况之间的关系。通过计划中的实验，我们将能够检测与青春期发育相关的体味成分的变化，我们将跟踪父母对婴儿体味的评估，以及父母闻到孩子的气味后的面部表情。这使得能够一致地描述从发送者到接收者的嗅觉亲子通信。

Development is accompanied by a range of processes that impact physiology, behavior, and cognition. Recent evidence shows that humans are able to extract information about another person’s age or hormonal status from body odors. This suggests that chemosensory cues of body odors are subject to systematic developmental changes. In the proposed project, we, therefore, aim to a) evaluate the chemical composition of human body odors in four different age groups (infants, pre-pubertal, pubertal, and post-pubertal children), b) relate the identified chemical profile to the individual hormonal status, and c) to assess how the chemical profile of body odors moderates parental perception of their child’s body odor. The proposed project will thereby start to clarify the molecular basis of human chemosensory communication and start to relate this to the function of body odors in parent-infant-relationships. Within phase I of the project, sensory-analytical methods have been established, which should now be adopted to investigate a higher number of body odor samples to achieve the aims of the project. Notably, the established methods will allow in-depth characterization of the odorant composition of body odor samples on the one hand, and of the volatile patterns on the other hand. Target substances have been defined and will be quantified to investigate the relationship between the age and the hormonal status of the odor donors. With the planned experiments, we will be able to detect pubertal development-related changes in body odor composition and we will track the parental assessment of infantile body odors and the parental facial expression after smelling the odor of their child. This enables a consistent description of the olfactory parent-child communication from the sender to the receiver.