THE SCENT OF EROS: MYSTERIES OF ODOR IN HUMAN SEXUALITY
by James Vaughn Kohl and Robert T. Francoeur
[New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 1995
14 chapters, 268 pages]
Precis by Kohl and Francoeur on Sex Odor

Abstract

This Precis provides an overview of the book "The Scent of Eros: Mysteries of Odor in Human Sexuality," which details for a general audience a five-step biological pathway that allows the social environment to influence the genetic nature of mammalian behavior. This pathway is: gene-cell-tissue-organ-organ system. Moreover, though there are many environmental influences on genes, mammalian pheromones are the only known social-environmental stimuli that appear to activate gene expression in neurosecretory cells of tissue in the brain, an organ that is essential to any organ system involved in behavior. Human pheromones appear both to elicit a homologous "neuroendocrine" response and to influence behavior. Thus, human pheromones may fulfill the biological criteria required to link at least one aspect of a sensory-based, nurturing, social environment: olfaction, to the genetic nature of human behavior through a five-step pathway common to all terrestrial mammals and to many other vertebrates.

Keywords

References

• Thomas, L. (1980) Notes of a biology-watcher: on smell. New England Journal of Medicine 302: 731-733.
• Hamer, D. & Copeland, P. (1994) The Science of Desire, Simon & Schuster: 163.