Scientists Gave Octopuses Ecstasy To Study Social Behavior
Octopuses keep popping up in some pretty far-out studies, like the one that suggested our tentacled-friends may have hitched a ride on an interstellar comet, before crash landing on Earth. But a recent study decided to drug these panspermic alien ambassadors with a dose of MDMA – the empathogen more commonly known as ecstasy or molly – to see if octopuses get the same warm, cuddly reaction to the drug that we do.
And according to the recent paper published in Current Biology… they sure do.
The paper’s authors Gül Dölen and Eric Edsinger conducted the experiment in order to study serotonin’s role in the evolution of social behavior. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter produced in the brain, believed to contribute to feelings of well-being, happiness, and motivation – it’s what makes us want to interact with each other.
The complexity of an octopus brain is similar to ours in many ways, only having branched off from us about 500 million years ago on the evolutionary timeline. But the necessary cognitive systems – like a cortex and reward circuit – which give humans the sense of love, empathy, and connection, are missing in the cephalopod brain.
And while one might expect octopuses to be socialites, constantly probing everything with those noodley appendages, they are in fact asocial animals – not just antisocial, but asocial. The only time they interact with one another is to mate, otherwise they are completely hostile.
So, when scientists gave a test group of seven Octopus bimaculoides varying doses of MDMA, they were amazed to see them respond in much the same way a human would. Heavy doses made them turn white, but smaller doses seemed to evoke a sensation known colloquially among ravers as “rolling.” They became touchy-feely with other octopuses, they were interested in minor sounds and smells, one started doing flips, and one “looked like it was doing water ballet,” Dölen told Gizmodo.
Dölen and Edsinger said they were astonished – as were their peers in the world of biology, who said they never imagined a monoamine neurotransmitter could have the same effect on a vastly different animal brain structure.
In her recent New York Times Bestseller, The Soul of an Octopus, Sy Montgomery elucidated the world on the truly sentient nature of octopuses. Unbeknownst to many, octopuses are in fact highly aware, as each of their tentacles has its own complicated network of neurons, allowing for eight independently functioning limbs of taste, touch, and motor function. Add to that a massive brain, proportionate to its size, and you get one of the most intelligent creatures in the ocean.
MDMA is a schedule 1 substance in the U.S., meaning it has a high potential for abuse and low potential for medical application. However, this antiquated and misunderstood classification is slowly being reconsidered, as groups like MAPS have had success with clinical trials using it as a tool for psychotherapy.
This recent study could inform scientists on the way our brains have developed over the millions of years of evolution since splitting from cephalopods, in order to better understand social disorders, such as PTSD and autistic social anxiety.
And unlike other trials that involve animal testing, this seems like one the octopuses might actually enjoy.
Watch the feature documentary Neurons to Nirvana, which explores the resurgence of psychedelics as medicine in modern society:
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A New Phase of Matter Appears to Defy Laws of Thermodynamics
Scientists have created a new phase of matter known as time crystals, a quantum phenomenon appearing to defy the laws of thermodynamics. Could this discovery upend our understanding of classical physics?
A team of researchers developing Google’s Sycamore quantum computer announced the successful creation of a time crystal that lasted for 100 seconds. This novel phase of matter appears to defy the second law of thermodynamics, which states that entropy, or chaos and disorder, always increases in an isolated system. In other words, energy must be put into a system in order to maintain structure or motion. But time crystals have been observed to maintain a constant state of flux, without losing any energy.
Dr. Simeon Hein, director of the Institute for Resonance, explains the science behind this strange phenomenon.
“Crystals are in everything we do—they’re in watches—they’re in so many things because they’re regular, they create evenness, they create this consistency. And just like their pattern is very consistent, the energy that crystals transmit turns into a very regular pattern which is why you can use a quartz crystal in a watch,’ Dr. Hein said.
“You can put a noisy electrical signal in but it will come out as a very consistent beat, and that created the idea for some people, in this case, Frank Wilczek from M.I.T. in 2012, to propose the idea that you not only had crystals in space, you could have crystals in time. You could create an oscillating circuit, using specific quantum principles, you could create a very constant quantum beat.”
Time crystals have been described as the first “out-of-equilibrium” phase of matter, meaning they maintain order while in an excited state. But how do time crystals accomplish this, without expending energy?
“At a quantum level, they’re getting energy from something called the Zero-point energy field. The Zero-point energy field is the lowest ground state of quantum matter, but the lowest state doesn’t mean absolute zero like nothing’s happening. The quantum ground state is actually the base state of the universe, where even though there’s nothing happening, the field itself generates energy, causing random fluctuations and particles to pop out of nowhere, and all sorts of really interesting effects that normally, I should say most of the time, we don’t see in our regular, physical reality,” Dr. Hein said.
“So these coherently entangled particles would be deriving their energy from the quantum vacuum field. But if they’re getting their energy from the quantum vacuum, instead of our classical world, you can’t see any reason why they would eventually have to wind down like our regular clocks would, and energy would dissipate.”
With this new discovery of time crystals appearing to defy the second law of thermodynamics, how has mainstream science reacted, or tried to reconcile this paradox?
“A lot of these quantum phenomena seem to defy classical physics, the whole idea of quantum entanglement suggests faster than light interaction or communication, Einstein called it ‘spooky action at a distance,’ and experiments later confirmed that you could take pairs of particles and separate them, and you could do something to one of them, and the other particle would immediately react at farther and farther distances away,” Dr. Hein said.
