hexadecanal - different reactions in men and women

[mumda]

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2021/11/22/chemical-babies-emit-triggers-aggression-women-over-men/8721323002/

This was mentioned last night on QI and I thought it was worthy of reading about.

fMRI scanning revealed that though men and women similarly perceive HEX as having no odor, their neurological response to it was radically different. In both sexes HEX activated the left angular gyrus, an area implicated in the integration of social cues. However, the way that it “talked” to other brain regions was sex dependent.

Why would this molecule affect the sexes differently? Mishor suggests an evolutionary explanation: “Male aggression translates many times into aggression toward newborns; infanticide is a very real phenomenon in the animal kingdom. Meanwhile, female aggression usually translates into defending offspring,” she says, explaining how the sex-differentiated outcome can help babies survive.

I thought it was interesting and worthy of sharing.
What is a woman? Someone who responds differently to men to hexadecanal.

I haven't heard of this, but I'd think there are already quite a lot of scientific and medical facts out there to illustrate the differences between men and women!

Yeah like willies and fannies 😁

They're my paternal grandparents, BTW

Hmm, i wonder if they'll try to use it in some fashion? Like in male prisons.

I think there are many medications which react differently with man and women, which is why the possibility of people having the wrong sex marker on their medical records could be extremely dangerous.

That's a fascinating fact though. We are after all still animals. Around primal stuff such as birth and death I've been surprised by my own actions sometimes seeming outside my control.

Hmmm, I’m not sure how relevant playing a computer game is, as a predictor of in real life interactions with other human beings.

Are the researchers really saying that their computer game experiment means that a roomful of babies and adult females will be a more aggressive environment than a roomful of adult females, but no babies?

Surely the way to test out that hypothesis would be an experiment involving a room with babies + women and a room with + no babies?

gah, with women + no babies.

I wonder if it has the same affect on the babies? Makes male babies more placid and female babies a little more tetchy. Don't know how you would test for that though. They're a bit young for Mario Kart.

So, babies make women fighty, is that the maternal instinct?

Don't know how you would test for that though. They're a bit young for Mario Kart.

😂

OMG mine too (Born in the late C19th).