Evidence map›Paper›PMID 19067327›Full record

ArticleHuman brain mapping2009

The neuronal substrates of human olfactory based kin recognition.

Johan N Lundström, Julie A Boyle, Robert J Zatorre, Marilyn Jones-Gotman

Open access · bronzeAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Human brain mapping, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 41 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
41citing papers in PubMed
2.2field-weighted citation impact, top 14% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

41 citing papers in PubMed, 85 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Past, Present, and Future of Human Chemical Communication Research.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2025
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  13. Are humans constantly but subconsciously smelling themselves?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020
    Review
  14. Interdisciplinary challenges for elucidating human olfactory attractiveness.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020
    Review
  15. Body odours as a chemosignal in the mother-child relationship: new insights based on an human leucocyte antigen-genotyped family cohort.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.

Johan N LundströmDepartment of Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. jlundstrom@monell.org
Julie A Boyle
Robert J Zatorre
Marilyn Jones-Gotman
Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital · CAMcGill University · CA

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Kin recognition, an evolutionary phenomenon ubiquitous among phyla, is thought to promote an individual's genes by facilitating nepotism and avoidance of inbreeding. Whereas isolating and studying kin recognition mechanisms in humans using auditory and visual stimuli is problematic because of the high degree of conscious recognition of the individual involved, kin recognition based on body odors is done predominantly without conscious recognition. Using this, we mapped the neural substrates of human kin recognition by acquiring measures of regional cerebral blood flow from women smelling the body odors of either their sister or their same-sex friend. The initial behavioral experiment demonstrated that accurate identification of kin is performed with a low conscious recognition. The subsequent neuroimaging experiment demonstrated that olfactory based kin recognition in women recruited the frontal-temporal junction, the insula, and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex; the latter area is implicated in the coding of self-referent processing and kin recognition. We further show that the neuronal response is seemingly independent of conscious identification of the individual source, demonstrating that humans have an odor based kin detection system akin to what has been shown for other mammals.

Indexed as

FamilyPattern Recognition, PhysiologicalBrainBrain MappingFemaleFriendsHumansOdorantsOlfactory PerceptionPhysical StimulationPositron-Emission TomographyRecognition, PsychologySiblingsTask Performance and AnalysisYoung Adult

Identifiers

PMID19067327
PMCPMC6870682
OpenAlexW2049916038

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.