For many years, the idea that humans could "read" chemical signals paralleling those of moths and wolves ran aground on a simple argument: people supposedly didn't have the equipment for detecting pheromones. In other words, they didn't have a vomeronasal organ, or VNO.
If you've been with us for a while, you'll remember that the little sense organ has many parallels with the sense of smell, and it's located in the nose of many mammals. If you haven't, it's a tiny pit on the side of the tissue separating the nostrils.
Although a vomeronasal organ was reported in the snout of a person (doubtless the first graduate-student lab rat) in 1703, later anatomists denied that people had the little bugger. Sure, they saw it in fetuses, but not in adults. So it must be a vestigial (defined) organ.
But after years of exciting news about insects and other animals communicating with pheromones, some scientists began wondering if the VNO really disappeared when Homo sapiens matured. Instead of looking for the micro-sniffer in dusty anatomy texts, they went looking for it in the snoots of real, live people (you guessed it -- more grad students). And they saw the oddest thing: a pit that looked, at least to some researchers, just like a vomeronasal organ. This pit -- one in each nostril, appeared in almost every shnozz in thousands of subjects.
On closer inspection, a few scientists thought the cells inside the organ bore a close resemblance to receptor cells in the VNOs of other animals. Suddenly the public discussion shifted to whether adults had a VNO to whether it was working. (We promise to get back to the skeptics soon, but bear with us for a moment. Can't tell a story without following the thread.)
This was the question:
Was the VNO wired to the brain?
And if so, did that mean that people have a sixth sense, one that they weren't even consciously aware of?
To answer this question, we must jump back to the 1960s when Dr. David Berliner was investigating the chemistry of skin at a lab at the University of Utah. Berliner extracted skin cells from used arm and leg casts. In a "lucky accident," he noticed that when he left flasks of some chemicals open in the lab there was a drastic change of mood: The grumpy scientists were transformed into a cheerful, cooperative lab team which devoted lunchtime to playing bridge instead of guzzling an isolated soda at the lab bench.
But when the flasks were closed, presto-chango, the lab-dwellers reverted to their grouchy selves. It was interesting enough to think about, but Berliner had other fish to fry, so he deposited the flasks in the deep freeze and went on to earn megabucks in the pharmaceutical industry.
In the 1980s, Berliner's curiosity got the better of him, and he began investigating the extracts, soon coming to believe they were, indeed, human pheromones. (That prospect was suddenly conceivable, due to the recent evidence -- from his labs, if not elsewhere -- for a human VNO.)
Berliner took two of his pheromones and formed Erox Corp. to market two perfumes under the brand name Realm.
To answer the question you're about to ask, Berliner insists that Realm will only improve your mood -- it won't cause the opposite sex to throng on you like randy gypsy moths. As he explains it, Realm for Men contains a pheromone from women's skin that puts men at ease, and vice-versa for the women's product. The goal, he says, is to make the wearer more confident, more approachable, and more attractive, to make them feel "self-assured, good. None of these are aphrodisiacs."
Does that simple repetition reflect a human longing for the long-sought stimulant? You bet your life.
But Berliner has even bigger plans.
