social perception: nootropics and compounds | sci-wiki

Androstadienone

Androstadienone (androsta-4,16-dien-3-one) is an endogenous volatile C19 16-androstene steroid found in male axillary sweat, semen, saliva and plasma, and the most intensively studied candidate human chemosignal or "pheromone." It is not a classical ion-channel neurosteroid; its central actions are triggered peripherally through the main olfactory epithelium, where the odorant receptor OR7D4 (a G-protein-coupled receptor) is the principal transducer and its genetic variation explains much of the wide person-to-person difference in whether the compound smells sweaty, urinous, sweet or nothing at all. Controlled exposure has been reported to modulate mood, sustained attention, salivary cortisol, autonomic tone and hypothalamic and frontolimbic activity, often in a sex-dependent and strongly context-dependent way. The evidence base is large but contested; effect sizes are small and several findings have failed to replicate, so the compound remains a putative rather than a proven pheromone.

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Neurosteroid

Androstenol

Androstenol (5-alpha-androst-16-en-3-alpha-ol, with a 3-beta epimer) is an endogenous 16-androstene steroid (a C19 steroid that lacks the C-17 oxygen of typical androgens) and a putative human chemosignal. It is synthesized alongside testosterone in the testis, secreted in axillary (underarm) sweat, and also occurs as a major aroma component of truffles, where its volatile, musky odor is biologically active. Its documented neuroactivity in humans is chemosensory; smelling androstenol has been reported to shift self-rated mood and social judgments in some experiments and to activate the anterior hypothalamus in women, although rigorous reviews consider the evidence for a true human pheromone effect weak and inconsistent. It is grouped with the neurosteroids because it is a steroid with measurable central chemosensory and neuroendocrine effects, not because a defined ion-channel mechanism has been established.

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Neurosteroid

Estratetraenol

Estratetraenol (estra-1,3,5(10),16-tetraen-3-ol) is an endogenous estrane steroid (a C18 steroid built on the same carbon skeleton as the estrogens) first isolated from the urine of pregnant women in 1968. It carries an aromatic A-ring like the classical estrogens but lacks the oxygen at carbon 17, which leaves it essentially devoid of conventional estrogenic hormone activity. It is best known as a putative human chemosignal (a chemical thought to carry social information between individuals), where it is treated as the female-associated counterpart to the male-associated steroid androstadienone. A body of psychophysical and neuroimaging work reports that trace, near-odorless exposure to estratetraenol can bias perception, mood, and physiological arousal in a sexually dimorphic manner, although independent replications have been mixed and its status as a true pheromone remains contested.

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