Contagious itch serves an important purpose, explains Zhou-Feng Chen, who studies itch at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Mice have notoriously bad eyesight, he says, and therefore “they cannot see mosquitos; they cannot see insects. But if other mice are scratching, you better scratch.”
In a study published October 4 in Cell Reports, Chen and his colleagues probed the neural circuitry driving contagious itch in mice, which he says likely differs from that of humans due to the comparative complexity of our brains. The team found a previously unreported visual circuit in the brain that appears to be responsible for detecting certain types ...
