Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Behavior Of Octopus Dosed With Ecstasy Helps Build On Research Of Psychedelic Drugs And PTSD Treatment
The Washington Post: This Is What Happens To A Shy Octopus On Ecstasy
If you give an octopus MDMA, it will get touchy and want to mingle. What sounds like the premise of a children’s book set at Burning Man is, in fact, the conclusion of a study published Thursday in the journal Current Biology. Neuroscientist Gül Dölen, who studies social behavior at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and octopus expert Eric Edsinger, a research fellow at Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., bathed octopuses in the psychedelic drug and observed the result. (Guarino, 9/20)
NPR: Mood Drug MDMA Makes Antisocial Octopuses Almost Cuddly
Octopuses are almost entirely antisocial, except when they're mating, and scientists who study them have to house them separately so they don't kill or eat each other. However, octopuses given the drug known as MDMA (or ecstasy, E, Molly or a number of other slang terms) wanted to spend more time close to other octopuses and even hugged them. "I was absolutely shocked that it had this effect," says Judit Pungor, a neuroscientist at the University of Oregon who studies octopuses but wasn't part of the research team. (Greenfieldboyce, 9/20)
In other news —
NPR: Gambling Monkeys' Risk-Taking Decisions Influenced By Area In Prefrontal Cortex
Experiments with two gambling monkeys have revealed a small area in the brain that plays a big role in risky decisions. When researchers inactivated this region in the prefrontal cortex, the rhesus monkeys became less inclined to choose a long shot over a sure thing, the team reported Thursday in the journal Current Biology. (Hamilton, 9/20)
Stat: Puppies Are Making People Sick — And It's People's Fault
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria that have infected more than 100 people and that have been linked to pet store puppies appear to have spread at least in part because healthy dogs were given antibiotics — a decision that all but surely fostered antibiotic resistance. ... More than half of the puppies in a sample of roughly 150 dogs studied as part of the outbreak investigation were given antibiotics not because they were sick, but to keep them from becoming so, according to a new study published Thursday. The technique, called prophylaxis, has been widely used in food animal production and is blamed for fueling antibiotic resistance. (Branswell, 9/20)
