I came across this while looking something up for a friend

Still digesting it as it does have some "paradoxical" findings


http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/283035.php

Thanks for posting this Chemar.

It's a little hard for me to digest at 5 in the morning, but I picked up on a couple of things that concern me about the study.

One is that they only studied 15 adolescents.
Two is that they were instructed to "remain still" (suppress tics at rest) during the procedure. I would have thought that would negate the whole purpose of the study

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/...822(14)01051-3
Increased GABA Contributes to Enhanced Control over Motor Excitability in Tourette Syndrome
Amelia Draper, Mary C. Stephenson, Georgina M. Jackson, Sophia Pépés, Paul S. Morgan, Peter G. Morris, Stephen R. Jackson

Much of the technical aspects are very difficult for me to understand. I'll revisit after caffeine. That probably won't help either.

I just reread this although I have to say it's way over my head unfortunately.

Contrary to what I had originally thought, I am seeing that asking the study participants to suppress their tics is actually an important point.

Some people of course have way more ability to suppress tics than others and it's common too for really young children to not be able to suppress their tics... I always saw that as a learned response but there's obviously much more to it than that.


In the last paragraph of the Discussion it says


nb -This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).

Not directly related to the thread but still I wanted to include this post. These types of studies really make me wonder about the safety of using benzodiazepines for anxiety. I am prescribed lorazepam, but I fear the effects of long-term use of GABAergic compounds on the brain's neurotransmitter systems. GABA clearly plays an extremely role in the brain's ability to communicate with itself and the rest of the body. Messing with it is probably playing with fire. Several sleep aids target the GABA receptor sites as well, ambien (zolpidem) being one of the most popular.