Scent of a Woman-Or Man: Odors Influence Person Knowledge.

First impressions of social traits are regularly, rapidly, and readily determined from limited information about another individual. Relatively little is known about the way that olfactory information, particularly from scents that are not body odors, alters a first impression. Can the attributes of an odorant be conferred onto a person associated with that scent? To explore this, 101 participants were asked to form an impression of a hypothetical person based on the following stimuli: A gender-neutral silhouette, a list of six personal characteristics, and one of five odorants.

Electromagnetic effects on forearm disuse osteopenia: a randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled study.

A randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled, feasibility and dosing study was undertaken to determine if a common pulsing electromagnetic field (PEMF) treatment could moderate the substantial osteopenia that occurs after forearm disuse. Ninety-nine subjects were randomized into four groups after a distal radius fracture, or carpal surgery requiring immobilization in a cast. Active or identical sham PEMF transducers were worn on the distal forearm for 1, 2, or 4 h/day for 8 weeks starting after cast removal ("baseline") when bone density continues to decline.

Cuff and aortic pressure differences during dobutamine infusion: a study of the effects of systolic blood pressure amplification.

Background: Central aortic systolic blood pressures (SBPs) differ from and are preferable to cuff pressures when calculating cardiac work, left ventricular wall stress, and rate-pressure product. Despite the widespread use of dobutamine, differences between aortic and brachial SBP (pulse amplification) and pulse transmission during dobutamine infusion have not been previously studied. This study assessed these differences and used applanated radial pulses with the Sphygmocor (AtCor Medical, Sydney, Australia) device to investigate the effects of dobutamine on arterial pulse transmission and pulse amplification.

Adding cocoa to sucrose: the effect on cold pain tolerance.

The sweet taste of sucrose acts as an analgesic, whereas the taste of a bitter substance decreases pain tolerance. The present experiment explores the analgesic effect of a complex taste and asks how adding cocoa, a substance often associated with sweet foods but that has a bitter taste, to a sucrose solution affects cold pain tolerance. The 24 male participants were exposed to Cold Pressor Tests (CPTs) while holding 1 of 3 tastants in their mouths: water, sucrose, or sucrose with cocoa added.

Ontogeny of the enhanced fetal-ethanol-induced behavioral and neurophysiologic olfactory response to ethanol odor.

Background: Studies report a fundamental relationship between chemosensory function and the responsiveness to ethanol, its component orosensory qualities, and its odor as a consequence of fetal ethanol exposure. Regarding odor, fetal exposed rats display enhanced olfactory neural and behavioral responses to ethanol odor at postnatal (P) day 15. Although these consequences are absent in adults (P90), the behavioral effect has been shown to persist into adolescence (P37).

The consequence of fetal ethanol exposure and adolescent odor re-exposure on the response to ethanol odor in adolescent and adult rats.

Background: An epidemiologic predictive relationship exists between fetal ethanol exposure and the likelihood for adolescent use. Further, an inverse relationship exists between the age of first experience and the probability of adult abuse. Whether and how the combined effects of prenatal and adolescent ethanol experiences contribute to this progressive pattern remains unknown.

A preliminary evaluation of the mean arterial pressure as measured by cuff oscillometry.

Background: The brachial artery (BA) mean blood pressure (MBP) is now readily available using the oscillometric technique. In contrast to the auscultatory method where MBP is calculated from the systolic (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP), oscillometric MBP is measured separately from either SBP or DBP. Because the peripheral MBP is free of amplification, it is nearly the same throughout the entire arterial tree and could represent the corresponding aortic pressure.

Experience-induced fetal plasticity: the effect of gestational ethanol exposure on the behavioral and neurophysiologic olfactory response to ethanol odor in early postnatal and adult rats.

Human fetal ethanol exposure is strongly associated with ethanol avidity during adolescence. Evidence that intrauterine olfactory experience influences chemosensory-guided postnatal behaviors suggests that an altered response to ethanol odor resulting from fetal exposure may contribute to later abuse risk. Using behavioral and neurophysiological methods, the authors tested whether ethanol exposure via the dam's diet resulted in an altered responsiveness to ethanol odor in infant and adult rats.

The relationship between PROP and ethanol preferences: an evaluation of 4 inbred mouse strains.

Ethanol's taste attributes undoubtedly contribute to the development of drug preference. Ethanol's taste is both sweet and bitter. Taster status for bitter 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) has been proposed as a genetic marker for alcoholism; however, human results are conflicting.

Predicting odorant quality perceptions from multidimensional scaling of olfactory bulb glomerular activity patterns.

Odorants and their perceptions differ along multiple dimensions, requiring that a critical examination of any putative neural code directly assess the multidimensional nature of the encoding process. Previous work has examined simple, systematic odorant differences that, regardless of coding strategy, would be expected to produce simple, systematic predictions in neural and behavioral responses. In the present study, an odorant identification confusion matrix task that extracts precise quality relationships across odorants was used to determine whether spatially specific glomerular activity patterns predict perceptual quality relationships for odorants that cannot easily be classified a priori along a single chemical dimension.

Dextroamphetamine pilot crossover trials and n of 1 trials in patients with chronic tension-type and migraine headache.

Objective: To examine the preventive effects of dextroamphetamine in select small groups of patients with chronic tension-type and migraine headache.

Background: Neither amphetamine nor methylphenidate is used as a headache preventive. This study was undertaken after a chance observation led one of us to prescribe dextroamphetamine with apparent successes in specific patients with chronic tension-type or migraine headaches.