Ecstasy works on octopuses too, study finds

[Chip (OP)]

source: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2018/09/ecstasy-works-on-octopuses-too-study-finds.html

Ecstasy works on octopuses too, study finds

[21 Sep 2018]

Humans and octopuses have one thing in common - the drug ecstasy brings out social behaviour.

An American study has found the drug can make the asocial, solitary species more touchy-feely.

"I was absolutely shocked that it had this effect," neuroscientist Judit Pungor, who wasn't part of the research team, told NPR.

Octopus brains are very different to that of humans, separated from us by 500 million years of evolution. Researchers say touch is rare for the sober animals.

"They have this huge complex brain that they've built, that has absolutely no business acting like ours does - but here they show that it does," said Dr Pungor.

Researchers at John Jopkins University believe it's because despite our differences, humans and octopuses have almost identical genes for a particular protein that binds serotonin to brain cells.

At first, they gave the creatures too much.

"They really didn't like it. They looked like they were freaked out," said lead researcher Gul Dolen. "They were just taking these postures of super hypervigilance. They would sit in the corner of the tank and stare at everything."

So they lowered to the dose to something closer to what a human would take on a night out - and the animals began "hugging".

Though it's unclear if the touching was platonic, the discovery shows serotonin has been driving social behaviour for at least 500 million years.

[bignasty]

Octopus party!!!

I gotta find me some pure MDMA one day. Wish I knew how to get on the dark net when SR was still around.

[MoeMentim]

an octopus hug is like 4 hugs in one!

[Chip (OP)]

the neuroscience behind it ...

source: https://neurosciencenews.com/ecstasy-octopus-social-behavior-9895/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+neuroscience-rss-feeds-neuroscience-news+%28Neuroscience+News+Updates%29

an excerpt:

“The brains of octopuses are more similar to those of snails than humans, but our studies add to evidence that they can exhibit some of the same behaviors that we can,” says Gül Dölen, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the lead investigator conducting the experiments. “What our studies suggest is that certain brain chemicals, or neurotransmitters, that send signals between neurons required for these social behaviors are evolutionarily conserved.”

Octopuses, says Dölen, are well-known to be clever creatures. They can trick prey to come into their clutches, and Dölen says there is some evidence they also learn by observation and have episodic memory. The gelatinous invertebrates (animals without backbones) are further notorious for escaping from their tank, eating other animals’ food, eluding caretakers and sneaking around.

But most octopuses are asocial animals and avoid others, including other octopuses. But because of some of their behaviors, Dölen still thought there may be a link between the genetics that guide social behavior in them and humans. One place to look was in the genomics that guide neurotransmitters, the signals that neurons pass between each other to communicate.