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You can't make someone love you, even on Valentine's Day, no matter what Hallmark, Godiva and FTD may say. But how much do we really know about how love works? What is it that attracts a particular man to a particular woman and (with any luck) vice versa? To see what light science could shed on the subject, I called Professor Martha McClintock at the University of Chicago. McClintock is an expert on odor and behavior who published a famous study in the early 1970s that showed that the menstrual cycles of college women living in dorms became synchronized through exposure to one another's pheromones, those faint chemical signals released from the skin that control the mating rituals of much of the animal kingdom. McClintock has a new study, published in the February issue of Nature Genetics, that makes an even more provocative link between sex and odor--specifically, the odor of a T shirt worn by a man on two consecutive days.
The experiment was simple. The T shirts were carefully prepared (no cologne, no cigarettes, no sex) and then placed in boxes where they could be smelled but not seen. Forty-nine unmarried women were asked to sniff the boxes and choose which box they would prefer "if they had to smell it all the time."
The results would have made Sigmund Freud proud. The women were attracted to the smell of a man who was genetically similar--but not too similar--to their dads. McClintock thinks there's an evolutionary explanation. "Mating with someone too similar might lead to inbreeding," she says. Mating with someone too different "leads to the loss of desirable gene combinations."
McClintock isn't suggesting you can attract a mate by smell alone, but that hasn't discouraged companies like Erox from bottling pheromones and stopping just short of calling them aphrodisiacs. Marketing websites feature links to scientific papers on the power of pheromones. I spoke to Dr. David Berliner, CEO of Pherin Pharmaceuticals, who did some of the initial research. While working at the University of Utah with natural compounds produced by human skin, he noticed a surprising change in the behavior of his male and female colleagues. "They developed an increased level of camaraderie that was hard to explain," he says. There were smiles, eye contact and increased approachability until the skin extracts were removed, at which point the group reverted to normal behavior.
But even Berliner balks at categorizing pheromones as aphrodisiacs. "I've been looking for an aphrodisiac for 11 years, and I'm convinced that there is no such thing," he says. The Food and Drug Administration agrees. It surveyed purported love potions--from oysters to rhino horn--and determined that none of them work. This Valentine's Day, I think I'll stick with flowers, a card and some chocolate.
Dr. Gupta is a neurosurgeon and CNN medical correspondent | 
就算是在情人節你也無法使某人愛你，不管Hallmark, Godiva及FTD說什麼，但我們對愛如何發作又了解多少？一個特定的男人是如何吸引一個特定的女人或是反之？為了了解科學方面的發現，我打了電話給芝加哥大學的Marta McClintock教授。 McClintock是氣味及行為的專家，其在1970年代即創辦了知名的研究， 發現住在宿舍女性大學生會經由暴露在另一個人由皮膚所釋放出的微弱化學信號控制很多動物配對習慣的費洛蒙下，使得月經週期一致。McClintock一項新的研究， 在Nature Genetics所出刊，在性慾及氣味間有更深的關連－特別是，一個男性連續穿了兩天的T-恤上的氣味。
這是很簡單的實驗，小心的準備一些T-恤（沒有古龍水、沒有煙味、沒有性的味道）然後放在可以聞但是看不見的盒子內。請49位未婚的女性聞這些盒子然後選擇願意一直去聞它的盒子。
結果應讓Sigmund Freud覺得驕傲，吸引女性的味道的男性跟其父親的基因類似，但又不是太類似，McClintock說，跟太類似的配對可能造成同系繁殖，而跟太不相似的配對又造成良好基因組合的減少。
McClintock不是建議你可以以氣味吸引配偶，但這可不會讓一些像Erox這類把費洛蒙裝瓶的公司及不再稱它們為春藥，網路行銷連結到有費洛蒙效力的科學文件， 我跟Pherin Pharmaceuticals 的CEO- 做過初步調查的Dr. David Berliner談過，在Utah大學所進行人體皮膚所產生的天然成份， 他發現男性及女性在行為上的驚人改變，“他們發展出難以解釋的感情增加等級”，他說。微笑，眼神的接觸及可親近性的增加，直到皮膚的分泌物不見了才恢復正常的行為。
但就算柏林市把費格蒙列為春藥，我找春藥巳經找了11年了而我相信了沒有這種東西，食品藥物管理局（FDA）也同意，調查一些所謂的催情劑－由牡蠣到犀牛角－ 發現其實都無效，在這個情人節，我想我會就靠花束、卡片及一些巧克力了。 |
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