Chemical communication is common among animals. In humans, the chemical basis of social communication has remained a black box, despite psychological and neural research showing distinctive physiological, behavioral, and neural consequences of body odors emitted during emotional states like fear and happiness. We used a multidisciplinary approach to examine whether molecular cues could be associated with an emotional state in the emitter. Our research revealed that the volatile molecules transmitting different emotions to perceivers also have objectively different chemical properties. Chemical analysis of underarm sweat collected from the same donors in fearful, happy, and emotionally neutral states was conducted using untargeted two-dimensional (GC×GC) coupled with time of flight (ToF) MS-based profiling. Based on the multivariate statistical analyses, we find that the pattern of chemical volatiles (N = 1655 peaks) associated with fearful state is clearly different from that associated with (pleasant) neutral state. Happy sweat is also significantly different from the other states, chemically, but shows a bipolar pattern of overlap with fearful as well as neutral state. Candidate chemical classes associated with emotional and neutral sweat have been identified, specifically, linear aldehydes, ketones, esters, and cyclic molecules (5 rings). This research constitutes a first step toward identifying the chemical fingerprints of emotion.

中文翻译：

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情绪体味的化学指纹。


化学通讯在动物中很常见。在人类中，社会交流的化学基础仍然是一个黑匣子，尽管心理学和神经研究表明，在恐惧和快乐等情绪状态下散发的体味会产生独特的生理、行为和神经后果。我们采用多学科方法来研究分子线索是否与发射器的情绪状态有关。我们的研究表明，向感知者传递不同情绪的挥发性分子在客观上也具有不同的化学性质。使用非靶向二维 (GC×GC) 结合基于飞行时间 (ToF) 的 MS 分析，对从同一捐献者在恐惧、快乐和情绪中性状态下收集的腋下汗液进行化学分析。基于多变量统计分析，我们发现与恐惧状态相关的化学挥发物模式（N = 1655 个峰值）与与（愉快的）中性状态相关的化学挥发物模式明显不同。快乐的汗水在化学上也与其他状态显着不同，但显示出与恐惧和中性状态重叠的双极模式。与情绪和中性汗液相关的候选化学类别已被确定，特别是直链醛、酮、酯和环状分子（5 个环）。这项研究是识别情绪化学指纹的第一步。