Prof. Dr. Nuno Gomes (Ispa -Instituto Universitário, Portugal) will give a lecture entitled “O lado invisível da comunicação humana: emoções, odores corporais e comportamento”.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Nuno Gomes is an Assistant Professor at ISPA and a researcher at the William James Center for Research. His research focuses on how emotion-related body odors influence cognition, behavior, and social interactions. He has participated in national and international projects, including the European POTION project, and is currently the Principal Investigator of an FCT-funded project. He is the author of several scientific publications in the fields of psychology and chemosensory communication.
When/Where: 03rd December 2026, 14h30, at Ispa – Instituto Universitário (Sala de Atos).
Abstract:
Research has shown that human sweat constitutes an important channel of emotional communication. Exposure to body odors produced during different emotional states influences the behavior and psychophysiological responses of those who receive them. This presentation will discuss the mechanisms through which different emotions shape the production of these chemical signals and their adaptive consequences for recipients.
Our research has shown that sweat production varies according to participants’ emotional experiences and sex. It appears to be particularly elevated in contexts of fear and is associated with the subjective intensity of the emotional experience in men, but not in women. These findings suggest that, in humans, men encode the intensity of negative emotional experiences in the amount of sweat they produce.
We have also demonstrated that exposure to these body odors—particularly those collected during states of fear and anxiety—induces a state of adaptive readiness in recipients, characterized by enhanced acquisition of sensory information, increased attention to relevant stimuli, and facilitated processing of unexpected changes in the environment. More recent findings further show that exposure to fear odors improves spatial memory for faces associated with threat, suggesting that these signals facilitate not only the detection of potential sources of danger but also their subsequent localization.
Taken together, this line of research, spanning from the production of chemical signals to their effects on recipients, contributes to a more integrated understanding of human chemosensory communication and its adaptive functions.
WJCR 