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| Poster #208 The Impact of Smelling Hexadecanal on Startle Response in Men and Women |
| Juna Khatib, Tali Weiss, Ofer Perl, Noam Sobel Department of Brain Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, --, Israel |
Hexadecanal (HEX) has been identified as a possible social chemosignal in rodents where it may contribute to social buffering (Klein et al, 2015). Moreover, given conservation of its cognate OR37B receptor, Hoppe et al (2006) suggested HEX may act across species. Consistent with this, in Mishor et al (2021) we found that exposure to HEX reduces reactive aggression in men but increases it in women, and in Endevelt-Shapira et al (2018) we found that it reduces startle response in men. Given the potential clinical value of a smell that can reduce anxiety, we test the hypothesis that HEX will have a sex-specific impact on startle response. In a within-subjects experiment, participants experience 20 startle events (50 ms, ̴ 95 dB) at semi-random inter-stimulus intervals of 30-90 seconds under three separate conditions across three days: HEX obscured in lavender, lavender alone, no odor. We measure electrocardiogram, galvanic skin response, respiration, and eyeblink electromyography to estimate the startle response. A concern in this design is possible cross-day habituation in startle. To test for this we ran 5 participants in the full 3-day pilot study. We observed evidence for a decline in startle within the session (Session 1: r = -0.562, p = 0.011; Session 2: r = -0.141, p = 0.551; Session 3: r = -0.510, p = 0.023), but importantly, not across sessions (repeated measures ANOVA: F(2,8) = 0.526, p = 0.610). This validates the design where we will now study 30 men and 30 women under the three intended conditions, in order to estimate the effects of HEX on startle. |