Oxytocin & Vocalizations - Measles & Brain - Octopus Arms

[Breedlove, S]

https://www.thetransmitter.org/oxytocin/oxytocin-shapes-both-mouse-mom-and-pup-behavior/

 Oxytocin shapes both mouse mom and pup behavior

By Claudia López Lloreda

Mouse pups, like other infants across the animal kingdom, cry to get their mother’s attention. The oxytocin system drives this communication and shapes how baby mice interact when reunited with their mothers, according to a study out today in Science.

Oxytocin, known colloquially as the “love” or “cuddle” hormone, stimulates milk release during nursing and promotes maternal care behaviors. But most oxytocin research thus far has focused solely on the mother, overlooking the neuropeptide’s potential effects on an infant’s brain and behavior.

This new study shows “the other half of the equation to what we already knew,” says Zoe Donaldson, associate professor of behavioral neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder, who was not involved with the study. Oxytocin is “this social signal that ultimately reinforces relationships,” she says.

The work employed a novel optogenetic tool that enabled the team to turn off neurons deep in the hypothalamus of mouse pups. After being separated from their mothers for three hours, the pups vocalized more using distinct patterns when reunited with their mothers than did pups that had not been separated, a process controlled by oxytocin neurons in the pups’ hypothalamus, the team found.

“It would make sense if oxytocin is on both sides of this: making moms want to take care of their pups that are calling, and making pups call in a manner that makes mom want to take care of them,” Donaldson says. “Then we have this sort of convergence where oxytocin is once again doing everything.”

© 2025 Simons Foundation
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https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/measles-death-shows-how-virus-can-hide-in-the-brain-for-years/

Child’s Death Shows How Measles in the Brain Can Kill Years after an Infection

By Andrea Thompson 

A school-aged child in Los Angeles County has died from a rare but always fatal complication from a measles infection they acquired when they were an infant who was too young to be vaccinated. The first dose of the vaccine is typically not administered until one year of age. Experts say the death underscores the need for high levels of vaccination in a population to protect the most vulnerable against the disease, as well as from side effects that can occur long after the initial illness has passed.

“This case is a painful reminder of how dangerous measles can be, especially for our most vulnerable community members,” said Los Angeles County Health Officer Muntu Davis in a recent statement.

The child who died suffered from subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), a progressive brain disorder that usually develops two to 10 years after a measles infection. The measles virus appears to mutate into a form that avoids detection by the immune system, allowing it to hide in the brain and eventually destroy neurons.

“It’s just a virus that goes unchecked and destroys brain tissue, and we have no therapy for it,” said Walter Orenstein, an epidemiologist and professor emeritus at Emory University, to Scientific American earlier this year.

People with SSPE experience a gradual, worsening loss of neurological function and usually die within one to three years after diagnosis, according to the Los Angeles County Health Department. The disorder affects only about one in every 10,000 people who contract measles. But the risk may be as high as about one in 600 for those who are infected as infants.

“There is no treatment for this. Children who suffer from this will always die,” said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and an attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, in a previous interview with Scientific American. 

© 2025 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN,
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https://www.sciencenews.org/article/octopus-arms-favored

Octopus arms are adaptable but some are favored for particular jobs

By Jake Buehler

All eight arms of an octopus can be used for whatever their cephalopod owner wishes, but some arms are favored for certain tasks. 

A new, detailed analysis of how octopuses wield their famously flexible appendages suggests that all eight arms share a skill set, but the front four spend more time on exploration and the back four on movement. The findings, published September 11 in Scientific Reports, provide a comprehensive accounting of how subtle arm movements coordinate the clever invertebrates’ repertoire of behaviors. 

Octopuses live their lives through their sucker-lined arms, which make up the bulk of their body mass and contain most of their nervous system. Marine biologist Chelsea Bennice wanted to understand how octopuses use the extreme flexibility of their boneless limbs to move, hunt and investigate their environment. Her colleagues had examined some of these behaviors in laboratory settings, but not in the wild.

Bennice and her colleagues watched 25 videos, filmed from 2007 to 2015, of multiple species of wild octopuses in Spain and the Caribbean, cataloging their behaviors and arm movements. In all, the researchers logged nearly 4,000 arm actions, which could be broken down into 12 types, including raising, reaching and grasping. The arms could deform in four distinct ways: elongating, shortening, bending and twisting. 

The team found that the octopuses were exceptionally ambidextrous.

“Octopuses are ultimate multitaskers,” says Bennice, of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. “All arms are capable of all arm behaviors and all arm deformations. They can even use multiple arm actions on a single arm and on several arms at the same time.”

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