Wonder if this would help lessen issues with noise sensitivities also, like misophonia / hyperacusis or even help with auditory processing disorder?
Maternal use is certainly indicated as increasing risk of autism almost 3x, how would it work the other end, ie I'm autistic with noise sensitivities and APD, can I train my brain to ignore sounds at the same time as I train my pitch up?
Okay, so this paper is over a decade old.
Was anything ever made available in the mean time?
My search didn’t find anything.
How does Pharmacological research work to identify interesting compounds. How and why did they decide to Valproate for this experiment.
As TFA says, they were specifically looking for the effect. It an "HDAC inhibitor." These uh, inhibit the enzyme HDAC, which is known to shut down brain plasticity in adult (mice). As to why they figured that out, some of the studies cited in TFA were looking at brain plasticity, plaques, brain damage (strokes?) and (of course) Alzheimer's.
BTW, one of Sodium Valproate's trade names is Depakote. Very commonly prescribed (or at least used to be) for treatment of bipolar disorder and epilepsy.
Not sure we know exactly how valproic acid works. HDACs are like master regulators. Histone acylation is kind of like the opposite of DNA methylation. It is a marker of active transcription. So messing around with these can lead to big epigenetic changes (i.e. state of the genome) in impacted cells / tissues.
My doc encouraged my 19-yr-old to take an ADHD drug, and claimed that it would allow him to learn new languages with the ease of a child.
I cannot remember now the name of the drug (I think it had a "Z" in the name), but I wondered how that could work. Must have been in the same class of drugs as this.