Recent research has shown that socio-emotional meanings, including sexual ones, are conveyed in human sweat. Researchers at the Rice University in Texas found that women can subconsciously sniff out men who are attracted to them.

Research team led by Denise Chen, assistant professor of psychology at Rice studied how the brains of female volunteers processed and encoded the smell of sexual sweat from men.

Samples of the sweat from men who had not used deodorant, aftershave or any other scented products for two days were collected during study. Some samples were taken from men who have watched boring educational documentary while other from men who had watched racy videos. Female volunteers were asked to sniff the sweat pads while their brains were scanned.

Study revealed that the smell of the 'sexy' sweat stimulated different parts of the women's brains, including the regions linked to emotion, pleasure, sex and reproduction.