Tag: neuroscience (page 1 of 2)

under the sea on ecstasy – octopuses on MDMA

 

octopus on ecstasy

An octopus explores its surroundings. After receiving ecstasy, octopuses become more social.

Have you ever wondered what would happen to an octopus on ecstasy? If you have, then you aren’t alone. Gul Dolen, a neuroscientist a Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, had wondered the same thing.

She and Eric Edsinger, conducted a study on the effects of the drug ecstasy, also known as (+/−)-3,4-methylendioxymethamphetamine or MDMA, on the brains and behaviors of octopuses. They placed octopuses  a chamber and allowed them to explore on their own. The chamber was connected to two others, one containing a hidden octopus and another containing a strange object. They then compared the time the octopus spent with either the object or the second octopus. The octopus tended to gravitate toward the other animal but only if it was a female. If the second octopus was a male, it avoided the second creature. This was true for bothe male and female octopuses placed into the chamber.

Then they gave the octopus a hit of MDMA, by dunking it into a solution containing the drug to allow it to soak in through its gills. While on the drug they spent way more time with male octopus. Describing their behavior, Dolen says”

“They mashed themselves against one wall, very slowly extended one arm, touched the [other animal], and went back to the other side. But when they had MDMA, they had this very relaxed posture. They floated around, they wrapped their arms around the chamber, and they interacted with the other octopus in a much more fluid and generous way. They even exposed their [underside], where their mouth is, which is not something octopuses usually do.”

This was very unusual behavior for octopuses, which are known to live in solitude. MDMA appeared to make the animals more social in a way that mimics its effects in humans. After studying serotonin transporter proteins in humans and octopuses, the researchers found that the sequences had a 50% match. It is especially similar in the part of the protein where MDMA binds, and that is why they believe they see similar effects in behavior.

But, some scientists remain unconvinced. The researchers always administered the drug after the control, so their more exploratory behavior could just be due to them being more comfortable in their surroundings. Other scientists suggest that ecstasy may just be interfering with the animal’s ability to detect chemical information from potential mates.

 

sleeping enhances memory more in children than adults

Sleeping child

Sleeping seems to enhance memory moreso for kids than adults. In a study children were able to turn implicit knowledge in to explicit knowledge at a higher rate than adults after 10-12 hours of sleep.

Popular Science offers this blurb on a study from Nature Neuroscience:

As a child, you sleep more deeply than an adult, and experience three times more slow-wave sleep and higher electrical activity in the brain during that sleep. This may help turn the large amount of information you accumulate during the day into knowledge you can recall intentionally.

The study, published in Nature Neuroscience this week, looked at 35 children between 8 and 11 years old, as well as 37 adults between 18 and 35. They were each asked to quickly press a sequence of buttons after they lit up. Half of them performed the activity before sleep, and half after. They were then asked to recall the sequence of the eight lights 10 to 12 hours later.

After sleeping, almost all of the children turned the implicit knowledge into explicitly and could remember the sequence they had pressed perfectly, while adults experienced smaller gains. Both groups remembered the sequence better after sleep than those who were asked to recall it right after their training.

rat brain telepathy

One rat brain can control the decisions of another using a brain-to-brain interface. The brain activity of one rat is encoded and then transmitted to the matching area of another. The rat receiving the signal will usually perform in the same manner. Ed Yong describes the intercontinental telepathy in Nature News:

The brains of two rats on different continents have been made to act in tandem. When the first, in Brazil, uses its whiskers to choose between two stimuli, an implant records its brain activity and signals to a similar device in the brain of a rat in the United States. The US rat then usually makes the same choice on the same task.

Miguel Nicolelis, a neuroscientist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, says that this system allows one rat to use the senses of another, incorporating information from its far-away partner into its own representation of the world. “It’s not telepathy. It’s not the Borg,” he says. “But we created a new central nervous system made of two brains.”

The original research is reported in Scientific Reports.

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