Materials and methods

D 5

Six heterosexual men, six heterosexual women and six male-to-female transsexuals participated to this study. They had their VNO detected with an optical fibre probe, then═underwent a cerebral electrical activity recording (EEG) using the Brain Mapping technique. Sixteen erotic pictures of naked people (8 man and 8 women) selected from the International Affective Picture System (Lang, 1999) were presented to each subject in two different sessions. Thirty minutes before the experiment, the subjects were nasally sprayed with a spray pump which delivered a solution with the pheromone or without it (placebo). The final concentration of pheromone diluted in this solution of ethanol and propylene glycol was 1╪g out of 1ml, therefore 50 ╪l spray delivers 50 ng of pheromone. As the VNO is a hundredth part of nostril surface, an amount of 500pg of nebulized═pheromone was supposed to reach / the VNO pit.

First session:

the transsexuals took the estra-tetra-enol;

the heterosexual men took the estra-tetra-enol or placebo

we administered the andro-stadie-nтne or placebo to the heterosexual women.

Second session:

this time, the transsexuals took the andro-stadie-nтne═

we administered the opposite substance, pheromone or placebo, to both heterosexual men and women

None of the subjects nor the═technician knew the type of substance, pheromone or placebo.

D 6

The brain mapping was recorded using nineteen electrodes on the head═in accordance with the International System 10-20 (Bocker, 1994). EEG recordings were visually inspected to discard the artifacts and then were converted in frequencies brain maps. According to previous studies (Foster 2004), we considered the decrease of alpha rhythms and the increase of beta as indicative of "physiological arousal".

For the statistical analysis the student's t-test was used with a significant level at p<0.05

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