Recently more and more studies test the interactions between the visual and olfactory systems. In their present paper the authors studied the effect of an odorous male gender specific sex-hormone - like steroid (5-alpha-androgenst-16-en-3-one) on face perception of healthy adult males in a two-alternative forced-choice gender discrimination task. According to their results subjects judge a particular face significantly more male when inhaling the steroid, than in the control condition. The authors' experiments illustrate that the olfactory presentation of sex-hormone - like steroids can alter the sexual discrimination of faces in a symmetric way, consequently there is a close interaction between olfactory and visual modalities, and this relationship manifests on socially important odorous substances and human faces.
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