NIH Study Finds Opioids Make Birds Sing

By Pat Anson, PNN Editor

Opioid medication has been associated with many things, from reduced pain and disability to constipation, addiction and overdoses. A new study has found that opioids also make birds sing.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison say fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid, causes “gregarious singing behavior” in starlings that sounds a bit like modern jazz. Starlings usually sing to attract mates, but these birds sang because they felt good.

“When I listen to these birds sing, it seems as if they are enjoying themselves,” Lauren Riters, PhD, a Psychology Professor at UW-Madison told Psychology Today. “To me, it sounds like free-form jazz riffs.”

The small study by Riters and her colleagues involved a total of 14 European starlings that were injected with either a placebo or small doses of fentanyl. Their findings, recently published in the journal Scientific Reports, suggest that fentanyl reduced stress and anxiety in the birds without making them intoxicated.

“We report that peripheral injections of the selective MOR (mu opioid receptor) agonist fentanyl cause dose-dependent increases in gregarious singing behavior in male and female starlings, while at the same time decreasing beak wiping, which is considered a sign of stress or anxiety. The fentanyl did not affect landings, indicating that fentanyl effects on behavior were not caused by gross deficits in motor activity,” Riters wrote.

Riters is a prolific researcher, participating in dozens of studies on the social activity of starlings, pigeons, quail, finches and other birds, much of it paid for with millions of dollars in federal grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

This particular study was funded by a $338,000 NIH grant to examine “deficits in social communication.” The researchers say their findings could someday be used to treat humans suffering from autism, depression and anxiety. Not to make them sing, but to make them more social.

“Such disorders are characterized by social withdrawal and deficits in the ability to communicate appropriately in distinct social contexts. The proposed research will identify manipulations that stimulate context-appropriate social interactions, which can be used in the design of clinical interventions in humans with context-specific deficits in social communication,” the UW-Madison grant application states.

Some may scoff at her research, but Riters says there are lessons to be learned from it because songbirds, like humans, are social animals that enjoy singing for the same reasons we do: It helps us feel better.

“If this is the case, it would mean that our studies on songbirds are revealing an ancient, evolutionarily conserved neural circuit that regulates intrinsically rewarded social behaviors across many animals,’ she said.