WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF ITCH
Seeing someone scratch often spurs an itchy feeling that wasn’t there before. Itches may be contagious for mice, too, according to a study published Friday (March 10) in Science.
“Scratching is an unconscious behavior evoked by an uncontrollable urge—not a decision—therefore this is what we call innate behavior, a basic instinct,” coauthor Zhou-Feng Chen of the Washington University school of medicine, told The Guardian.
Chen and colleagues decided to investigate the mechanism behind this behavior in mice. First, they exposed mice to conspecifics that were scratching (either in an adjacent cage or on video), and found that this increased scratching behavior in the mice. The team also discovered that the mice who had caught the itch displayed more activity in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), a ...
