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Olfactory exposure to males, including men, causes stress and related analgesia in rodents

Abstract

We found that exposure of mice and rats to male but not female experimenters produces pain inhibition. Male-related stimuli induced a robust physiological stress response that results in stress-induced analgesia. This effect could be replicated with T-shirts worn by men, bedding material from gonadally intact and unfamiliar male mammals, and presentation of compounds secreted from the human axilla. Experimenter sex can thus affect apparent baseline responses in behavioral testing.

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Figure 1: Male-associated olfactory stimuli produce decreased pain behavior in mice.
Figure 2: Observed decreases in pain behavior are due to stress-induced analgesia.
Figure 3: Mice tested by male experimenters display lower apparent baseline pain sensitivity than those tested by female experimenters.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the following individuals for serving as observers and/or T-shirt donators: N.M. Agalave, A. Brookins, A.J. Chabot-Dore, L.S. Dewberry, G. Hathaway, J. Feingold, T. Gao, M. Hatzopoulou, J.M.C. Mogil, J. Rinz, K. Sandor, A. Scholl, S. Stephenson, J. Su, S. Totsch and L. Topham. Thanks to L.S. Stone for use of her laboratory. This work was supported by an unrestricted grant from the Louise and Alan Edwards Foundation (J.S.M.), a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery grant (J.S.M.) and a Research in Undergraduate Institutions grant from the US National Science Foundation (W.F.S.).

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Authors

Contributions

R.E.S., S.G.S. and J.S.M. conceived of the study. R.E.S., L.J.M. and J.S.M. designed most experiments. R.E.S., L.J.M., K.A.I., S.G.S., S.R., A.H.T., J.S.W., E.L.A., A. Delaney, B.K., P.L., J.C.S.M., M.M., A. Dokova, G.W., A.P.S., T.Q. and W.F.S. collected and analyzed data. J.F. and C.I.S. designed certain experiments. R.E.S., L.J.M. and J.S.M. wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Jeffrey S Mogil.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary Figures 1–9 and Supplementary Tables 1 and 2 (PDF 1775 kb)

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Sorge, R., Martin, L., Isbester, K. et al. Olfactory exposure to males, including men, causes stress and related analgesia in rodents. Nat Methods 11, 629–632 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2935

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