4/10/2021 Octopuses, like humans, sleep in two stages | Science | AAAS

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Octopuses, like humans, sleep in two stages gift today.
By Rodrigo Pérez Ortega Mar. 25, 2021 , 11:00 AM

Got a tip?
Do octopuses dream? Scientists haven’t cracked that mystery, but How to contact
the news team
they have come a bit closer. A new study reveals that, like us, our
eight-legged friends experience both an active and a quiet sleep ScienceInsider
stage. Because humans and octopuses are separated by more than Chinese COVID-19
500 million years of evolution, the discovery suggests a two-stage vaccine maintains
protection in
sleep pattern evolved independently twice. variant-plagued
Brazil
“We haven't shared an ancestor with an octopus since we were just By So a
single cells in the ocean,” says Marcos Frank, a neuroscientist at Moutinho Apr. 9, 2021

Washington State University who was not involved with the research.
Biden wants $6.5
“It's incredible, if this holds up.” billion for new
health agency to
To make the discovery, researchers lmed four octopuses of the speed
species Octopus insularis, found off the coast of Brazil, while they treatments
By Jocelyn
slept in tanks in the lab. They checked whether the animals were Kaiser Apr. 9, 2021
awake or asleep by showing videos of live crabs on a screen facing
their tank or gently hitting the tank wall with a rubber hammer to see Biden’s rst
whether they stirred. During their “quiet” sleep, the octopuses’ skin budget request
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4/10/2021 Octopuses, like humans, sleep in two stages | Science | AAAS

was pale and their pupils narrowed to a slit; they were mostly still, goes big on
science
and their suckers and arm tips sometimes moved gently and slowly. By Jeffrey
But during “active sleep,” their skin turned darker and stiffened; they Mervis Apr. 9, 2021
moved their eyes and muscular twitches contracted their suckers
With ‘smoke
and body (see video above).
ring’
technology,
The active sleep, which typically lasted about 40 seconds, usually fusion startup
occurred after a long quiet sleep, and the cycle repeated every 30 to marks steady
progress
40 minutes, the researchers report today in iScience.
By Daniel
Clery Apr. 8, 2021
These two states are akin to the two major stages in mammalian
sleep: rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, in which the eyes move
Studies that
quickly and dreams happen, and “slow-wave” sleep, in which make brainlike
electrical activity synchronizes across the brain. This alternating structures or add
human cells to
cycle, also present in birds and possibly in reptiles, is thought to be animal brains are
important for consolidating memories and clearing waste from the ethical, for now,
panel says
brain. By Jocelyn
Kaiser Apr. 8, 2021
Still, the researchers are cautious about drawing too many
similarities. Octopuses and mammals have very different brain More
architecture, notes team member Sidarta Ribeiro, a sleep ScienceInsider
neuroscientist at the Brain Institute of the Federal University of Rio Sifter
Grande do Norte (UFRN). Climate change is
triggering more
“I doubt very much that what's going on in the brain in the states is lightning strikes in
exactly the same [as what happens in mammals],” adds Jennifer the Arctic

Mather, an animal behaviorist at the University of Lethbridge who By So a

Moutinho Apr. 7, 2021
was not involved with the work. “But the fact that there are different
states is very interesting.” Tropical forest
destruction increases,
In humans, dreaming usually happens during REM sleep, but “we despite the pandemic
cannot ask the octopus if they are really dreaming,” says team By So a
member Sylvia Lima de Souza Medeiros, a neuroscience graduate Moutinho Mar. 31, 2021

student at UFRN. But she hypothesizes that her team could test this
Pesticide-blocking
in the lab by comparing skin color changes while the octopus is gene transferred from
awake and learning a new challenge, and while it is sleeping. “Maybe plants to animals
what they show in the skin can be related to what they are dreaming By So a
Moutinho Mar. 26, 2021
about,” she says.
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4/10/2021 Octopuses, like humans, sleep in two stages | Science | AAAS

Even if we can’t know if the eight-legged animals are dreaming, “it's Your spit could
reveal whether
hard not to imagine that they're experiencing something,” Frank you’ve had a
says. Octopuses are known for solving very tough challenges like concussion
removing the lid from a jar or camou aging to blend in with their By Adrian
Cho Mar. 24, 2021
environment, he notes. Testing how sleep (or a lack of it) impacts
learning these abilities might offer insight into the role of sleep in Scientists have been
consolidating memories in these creatures. underestimating the
power of tornadoes
To truly gure out what is going on in these animals’ brains, Mather By So a
says, researchers would need to measure their brain activity with Moutinho Mar. 23, 2021

electrodes—something that would be tricky to do with these More Sifter

underwater animals that eagerly manipulate anything stuck to their
bodies with their powerful tentacles. But “nobody ever accused
octopuses of being easy to study,” she says.

Posted in: Plants & Animals

doi:10.1126/science.abi7092

Rodrigo Pérez Ortega

Rodrigo Pérez Ortega is a science journalist covering life sciences, medicine,
health, and academia.
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