Why Did Octopi Start Cuddling on Ecstasy?

On the show, a postdoc at Stanford put octopi on MDMA, also called ecstasy. She had a paper in Current Biology showing what the animals did next. The octopi then wanted to spend more time with other octopi. They started cuddling.

Andrew Huberman says she is Turkish, as he believes, and he apologizes because her last name escapes him at the moment. He calls the missing surname a function of his brain. The part he states outright is the experiment. She put octopi on MDMA, on ecstasy, and found the social change. He says the paper is published in Current Biology, and he calls Current Biology a great journal. The published finding is social. After MDMA, the octopi wanted to spend more time with other octopi, and they started cuddling.

He remembers the cuddling even while her last name escapes him. A Stanford postdoc gave octopi ecstasy, Current Biology published the paper, and the animals responded by spending more time together.