ArticleScientific reports2017
Pregnancy reduces the perception of anxiety.
Article in Scientific reports, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Unintended VOC emissions from cotton and viscose pads complicate olfactory experiments.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Past, Present, and Future of Human Chemical Communication Research.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2025Review
- Pregnant women exhibit decreased trigeminal sensitivity.Brain and behavior · 2024Article
- Sexual Orientation Affects Neural Responses to Subtle Social Aggression Signals.Archives of sexual behavior · 2024Article
- Navigating intensive altered states of consciousness: How can the set and setting key parameters promote the science of human birth?Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
- Psychological variables in medically assisted reproduction: a systematic review.Przeglad menopauzalny = Menopause review · 2022Review
- You See What You Smell: Preferential Processing of Chemosensory Satiety Cues and Its Impact on Body Shape Perception.Brain sciences · 2021Article
- The importance of the olfactory system in human well-being, through nutrition and social behavior.Cell and tissue research · 2021Review
- Hypoxic Adaptation of Mitochondrial Metabolism in Rat Cerebellum Decreases in Pregnancy.Cells · 2020Article
- Dental Phobia among Pregnant Women: Considerations for Healthcare Professionals.International journal of dentistry · 2020Article
- Electrophysiological correlates of top-down attentional modulation in olfaction.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Women's Word Use in Pregnancy: Associations With Maternal Characteristics, Prenatal Stress, and Neonatal Birth Outcome.Frontiers in psychology · 2018Article
- Empathic Cognitions Affected by Undetectable Social Chemosignals: An EEG Study on Visually Evoked Empathy for Pain in an Auditory and Chemosensory Context.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In humans, stress can be contagiously transmitted via chemosignals on a subconscious level. This study investigates how pregnancy affects neural responses to anxiety chemosignals. Using cotton pads, 28 men donated axillary sweat immediately before an academic examination (anxiety sweat) and during ergometer training (control). Via a constant-flow olfactometer, samples were presented (oddball paradigm) to 12 non-pregnant (NP) women, 14 women in their first (T1), and 18 in their third (T3) trimester of pregnancy. Chemosensory event-related potentials and current source densities (CSD) were analysed (60 electrode setup). Compared to NP-women, pregnant women display diminished evaluative processing of the sweat samples (targets; P3-1/ P3-2 amplitudes) and delayed evaluative processing of the anxiety sweat (targets; P3-2 latency). T3-women show attenuated early processing (targets; N1 amplitude) compared to NP-women, and reduced evaluative processing compared to T1-women (standards; P3-2 amplitude). CSDs (P3-1/ P3-2 latency ranges) reveal that T1- and T3-women show an atypical activation distribution to anxiety sweat. Most participants were unable to detect the sweat samples (anxiety sweat: 79.5%, sport sweat 88.6%). The results demonstrate that the processing of anxiety chemosignals progressively vanishes during pregnancy. This effect is likely to occur without any cognitive control.
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