Oxytocin Friendships - Bitter Tastes - Lithium & Alzheimer's - Addiction Treatment

0 views

Skip to first unread message

Breedlove, S

unread,

Aug 9, 2025, 6:43:47 AMAug 9

https://www.thetransmitter.org/neurobiology/oxytocin-prompts-prairie-voles-to-oust-outsiders-fortifying-their-friendships/

Oxytocin prompts prairie voles to oust outsiders, fortifying their friendships

By Holly Barker

Prairie voles do not need oxytocin receptors to bond with a mate or care for their pups, but the receptors are indispensable for forming robust friendships, according to a study published today in Current Biology.

Female voles that lack the receptors struggle to make friends with other females, and when they do, they are not motivated to spend time with friends over strangers and quickly lose track of their friends in a group, the study found.

The findings suggest that oxytocin is required for nurturing specific relationships, rather than for general sociability, says principal investigator Annaliese Beery, associate professor of integrative biology and neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley. That concept—known as selectivity—is a “really important component of human friendships,” she says.

Until now, prairie voles have typically been used to probe the neural basis of love: The animals are unusual among rodents for selecting a single partner to nest and raise pups with. Compared with non-monogamous vole species, prairie voles have a high density of oxytocin receptors in multiple brain regions, including the nucleus accumbens.

Drugs that block the receptors there impair mate attachment in prairie voles, whereas brain infusions of oxytocin fast track the animal’s choice of a lifelong partner.

Oxytocin appears to be especially important in the initial stages of bond formation, according to studies of transgenic prairie voles. Voles genetically engineered to carry loss-of-function mutations in both copies of the oxytocin receptor gene are less likely to bond with a littermate they have been housed with for less than a week, according to work reported in a 2024 preprint.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/this-mushrooms-incredibly-bitter-taste-is-new-to-science/

This Mushroom’s Incredibly Bitter Taste Is New to Science

By K. R. Callaway

Ever bite into something so bitter that you had to spit it out? An ages-old genetic mutation helps you and other animals perceive bitterness and thus avoid toxins associated with it. But while most creatures instinctively spit first and ask questions later, molecular biologists have been trying to get a taste of what bitterness can tell us about sensory evolution and human physiology. A new study, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, is the first analysis of how taste receptors respond to a mushroom’s bitter compounds—which include some of the most potently bitter flavors currently known to science.

The bitter bracket mushroom is nontoxic but considered inedible because of its taste. Researchers extracted its bitter compounds, finding two familiar ones—and three that were previously unknown. Instead of tasting these substances themselves, the scientists introduced them to an “artificial tongue” that they made by inserting human taste receptors into fast-growing embryonic kidney cells. One of the newfound bitter substances activated the taste receptors even at the lowest concentration measured, 63.3 micrograms per liter. That’s like sensing three quarters of a cup of sugar in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

Humans have about 25 kinds of bitter taste receptors lining our mouths and throats, but these same receptors also grow throughout the body—in the lungs, digestive tract and even brain. Despite their ubiquity, they have been only partially explored. Four of our bitter receptors have no known natural activator. Finding activating compounds could illuminate the interactions that might have shaped those taste receptors’ evolution, says study lead author Maik Behrens, a molecular biologist at the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology.

https://www.science.org/content/article/could-lithium-stave-alzheimer-s-disease

Could lithium stave off Alzheimer’s disease?

By Annika Inampudi

Once placed in sodas as a mood enhancer and eventually made into a drug for bipolar disorder, lithium is probably best known for powering the batteries in our electronics. But a new study suggests yet another potential use for this versatile metal as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. In a paper published today in Nature, researchers report reduced lithium levels in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s and mild cognitive impairment. They also found that a form of lithium improved memory when fed to mice with Alzheimer’s-like symptoms.

The paper is a “thorough and pioneering exploration” of lithium’s role in the brain during cognitive decline, says Ashley Bush, a psychiatrist at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health who was not involved in the study. The work offers a new route forward for a field still eager to find new treatments despite the recent approval of antiamyloid drugs, he says.

Found in extremely low concentrations in rocks and seawater, lithium enters the human body through foods such as cereals, cabbage, and tomatoes, or through drinking water that naturally flows through lithium-rich rocks. For reasons that remain unknown, lithium seems to stabilize mood, and the compound lithium carbonate has been used for decades to treat mania in bipolar disorder.

Some previous studies have hinted that the metal might also have neuroprotective effects, leading researchers to propose it as a treatment for neurodegenerative conditions. But these findings come mostly from observational studies and haven’t proved lithium can change the course of Alzheimer’s. Small clinical trials in dementia patients have produced mixed results.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/07/magazine/suboxone-buprenorphine-opioid-addiction-drugs.html

It Was a Promising Addiction Treatment. Many Patients Never Got It.

By Shoshana Walter

In 2005, J. was a young pharmacist, in the middle of a divorce, when he decided he needed a change. He was outgoing, a former rugby player, and he had begun to feel out of place among his quiet co-workers. “Does a pharmacist ever come over to you and chitchat?” he says. “They’re very mousy and very introverted.”

For his new job, J. — who asked to be referred to by his first initial to protect his privacy — had in mind something a little more glamorous: pharmaceutical sales. He found a contract position at Reckitt Benckiser Pharmaceuticals, a U.S. subsidiary of a household-goods company based in Britain that was best known for Lysol and French’s mustard. The company had recently introduced Suboxone, a groundbreaking new medication in the United States that treats opioid addiction. Much like nicotine gum, Suboxone worked as a substitute, binding to the same receptors in the brain as illicit opioids, taking away withdrawal symptoms, quelling cravings and making it hard to continue misusing drugs.

At other companies — like Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin — sales reps regularly trawled doctors’ offices and used company credit cards to treat physicians to expensive meals and lavish trips. At Reckitt, sales reps were told they had a different mandate. “You weren’t a credit card on legs,” says Chris Hassan, who oversaw Reckitt’s sales force at the time. Reps held the title “clinical liaisons,” and their job was not only to sell Suboxone but also to convince doctors that addiction was a disease, not a moral failing, and that it could be treated with medication instead of prison sentences.

Reckitt hired people of all backgrounds — counselors and behavioral-health clinicians as well as traditional salespeople, including ones they recruited from Purdue Pharma. Those who had sold OxyContin, Hassan notes, seemed especially motivated to sell the solution to the problem they had helped cause. “The people that had mirrors in their home and had to look at themselves, they didn’t like what they saw,” he says. “Purdue was a great source of hires for us.”

Almost right away, however, it became clear that most doctors were not lining up to care for addicted patients. Some were the same physicians who were driving the opioid crisis by overprescribing painkillers. Others felt ill equipped to treat substance users or dismissed such patients as untrustworthy. An addicted patient was “a liar or crook,” says George Agapios, an Indiana doctor who initially resisted offering treatment. He describes many physicians’ feelings in that era as: “The people associated with it were not exactly the cream of the crop — so let’s not waste our time.” Several doctors turned Reckitt reps away from their offices.