Valproate reopens critical-period learning of absolute pitch (2013)

15 pointsposted 13 hours ago
by ChadNauseam

6 Comments

ddmf

6 hours ago

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?

schaefer

12 hours ago

Okay, so this paper is over a decade old.

Was anything ever made available in the mean time?

My search didn’t find anything.

billfruit

12 hours ago

How does Pharmacological research work to identify interesting compounds. How and why did they decide to Valproate for this experiment.

mgsouth

11 hours ago

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.

pfisherman

10 hours ago

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.

sam_goody

7 hours ago

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.