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，明显的社会技能缓解化学社会感知，从而帮助社会互动。该项目是第一个显示社会融合和社会化学感受能力之间直接联系的方法。这种联系被认为具有临床相关性，并应有助于解释精神分裂症或精神分裂症患者的社会缺陷行为和经验。第一项研究将检查具有大型或小型社交网络的健康个体（如“社交网络指数”SNI所示）。预计与具有低SNI的参与者相比，具有高SNI的参与者更有效地使用社交化学信号作为社交信息的来源。因变量将包括与注意力相关的和注意前的社会感知的指标。此外，化学社会知觉的表现将与视觉社会知觉的表现进行差异化比较。一个辅助假设用于调查具有显著社交技能的个体是否也对常见（非社交）气味表现出改善的感知性能。第二项研究将以精神分裂症和精神分裂症为研究对象，证明化学社交交流对社会行为的影响的临床相关性。预计申请的项目将成为对迄今为止发表的人类化学交流研究结果进行实质性重组的基础，并为该主题提供新的理论（进化论）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.