For people living with narcolepsy type 1, a joke at a dinner table can end with their knees buckling. Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School now report evidence that the hormone most associated with hugs and bonding, oxytocin, sits near the center of that reaction.
The study, published in Nature Neuroscience on July 14, examined cataplexy, the abrupt loss of muscle tone that strikes while a person is fully awake and aware. Working in mice bred to lack orexin, the brain peptide that people with narcolepsy type 1 lose, the team found that oxytocin signaling ramps up right before a socially triggered attack, and that an oxytocin receptor blocker prevents the increase.
