ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2017
Behavioral and neural correlates to multisensory detection of sick humans.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 60 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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.
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Who cites it
60 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 136 citations in OpenAlex.
- The scent of emotions: A systematic review of human intra- and interspecific chemical communication of emotions.Brain and behavior · 2020Pooled it
- Intravenous administration of LPS activates the kynurenine pathway in healthy male human subjects: a prospective placebo-controlled cross-over trial.Journal of neuroinflammation · 2021Trial
- Biological motion during inflammation in humans.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2020Trial
- Identification of acutely sick people and facial cues of sickness.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2018Trial
- Addendum: Neural anticipation of virtual infection triggers an immune response.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- From female to female: Communication via chemosignals.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Protective but Costly: The Impact of Behavioral Immune System Reactivity on Mental Health.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Article
- Odor-enhanced Visual Processing in PTSD.NeuroImage · 2025Article
- Past, Present, and Future of Human Chemical Communication Research.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2025Review
- Biofilms and exopolysaccharides in Pseudomonas aeruginosa: pathogenesis, immune evasion, and lung-brain signaling during pneumonia.Signal transduction and targeted therapy · 2024Article
- Inflammation as a Potential Mechanism Contributing to Sexual Functioning Following Initiation of Gender-Affirming Hormone Therapy.Current sexual health reports · 2024Article
- The beneficial effects of social support and prosocial behavior on immunity and health: A psychoneuroimmunology perspective.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2024Article
- SARS-CoV-2 specific sIgA in saliva increases after disease-related video stimulation.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Assessing sickness behavior in the French: Validation of the French translation of the sickness questionnaire (SicknessQ) in a non-clinical French population.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2023Article
- Resting parasympathetic activity is associated with malodor-induced change in perceived foreignness of speakers.Brain and behavior · 2023Article
- Human scent as a first-line defense against disease.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Discriminating between sick and healthy faces based on early sickness cues: an exploratory analysis of sex differences.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2023Article
- Humans can detect axillary odor cues of an acute respiratory infection in others.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2023Article
- Disgusting odors trigger the oral immune system.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2023Article
- Attractive and healthy-looking male faces do not show higher immunoreactivity.Scientific reports · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Throughout human evolution, infectious diseases have been a primary cause of death. Detection of subtle cues indicating sickness and avoidance of sick conspecifics would therefore be an adaptive way of coping with an environment fraught with pathogens. This study determines how humans perceive and integrate early cues of sickness in conspecifics sampled just hours after the induction of immune system activation, and the underlying neural mechanisms for this detection. In a double-blind placebo-controlled crossover design, the immune system in 22 sample donors was transiently activated with an endotoxin injection [lipopolysaccharide (LPS)]. Facial photographs and body odor samples were taken from the same donors when "sick" (LPS-injected) and when "healthy" (saline-injected) and subsequently were presented to a separate group of participants (
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Registered trials
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.