University of Valencia logo Logo Scientific Culture and Innovation Unit - Chair for Scientific Dissemination Logo del portal

Request the lecture

Many animals communicate with the individuals of their species by means of chemical signals, i.e. smells and pheromones, which they emit to find a partner, attract the mother's attention, mark their territory against invaders, etc. Chemical signals also allow communication between individuals of different species, for example, kairomones are signals of predators that frighten their prey. But the animal's behavior does not depend on the chemical signal, but on the brain's interpretation of these signals according to the animal's physiological state.

For example, the same male pheromone, which attracts female mouse "godmothers", causes the mothers to become incredibly aggressive and attack the males. Or the kairomones contained in cat urine, which scare rats, become irresistible when the rats are infected with the Toxoplasma parasite. In this talk, we will therefore learn what are the brain mechanisms that mediate the perception of smells, pheromones and kairomones, and that control the social and sexual behavior of many animals. In addition, we will ask what role these chemical signals play in humans. Is love and hate in us also a matter of noses?

 

 

 

Brief CV

Carmen Agustín Pavón was born in Valencia in 1980. She obtained a doctorate in Neurosciences from the University of Valencia, with a short stay at the Università di Roma La Sapienza. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge, Center for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, Imperial College London, and Universitat Jaume I de Castelló, where she was also a professor in the Medicine degree. She currently teaches at the Faculty of Biology of the University of valencia. Her lines of research focus on the neurobiology of olfaction, emotional behavior and socio-sexual and maternal behavior, and she is an expert in animal models of diseases of the nervous system. She is a researcher at the Comparative Functional Neuroanatomy Laboratory of the University of Valencia. She is currently secretary of the Spanish Olfactory Network. Apart from his research activity, he has been dedicated to scientific dissemination since he won the Ellipse Prize for Scientific Dissemination of the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park at the end of 2011, for the work El Maquinista del Doctor Zhivago. She is a blogger on the dissemination platforms Naukas and Scilogs, and has published articles in the magazines Redes, Mente y Cerebro and Historia y Vida. She has given numerous talks in institutes, scientific cafes and informative events, in some of which she has also been an organizer such as "La Neuromascletà" during World Brain Week. She has also been a collaborator in the science dissemination tv show Órbita Laika on La 2 of RTVE.

 

More information

 

Social networks

  • @CarmenAgustin
  • @NeuroFunLab 
  • @BiologiquesUV
  • @CdCienciaUV
  • @MednightGTS

Request the lecture

Stimulating scientific vocations is a project of the Scientific Culture and Innovation Unit that has co-funding from the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology and the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.