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Psychophysics × Pharmacology · GABA

GABAergic inhibition and perceptual awareness

Co-first-author pharmacology study showing that both GABA_A and GABA_B modulation increased perceptual suppression during binocular rivalry, providing causal evidence linking inhibition to perceptual awareness.

Design

Double-blind crossover pharmacology

Role

Co-first author

Venue

Journal of Neuroscience

Overview

This project tested whether increasing GABAergic inhibition in the human brain causally changes perceptual awareness.

In a double-blind crossover pharmacology design, we compared placebo against two different GABA-modulating interventions and measured their effects on binocular rivalry. The main finding was that both clobazam (GABA_A) and arbaclofen (GABA_B) increased perceptual suppression relative to placebo, providing causal evidence that inhibitory signaling shapes rivalry dynamics. These effects were not explained by response latency or response criterion changes, and the GABA_B result was replicated in an independent sample.

Why it matters

This work helped move the story from correlation to causation. It also has translational relevance because binocular rivalry has been studied as a noninvasive perceptual marker of altered inhibitory signaling in autism and related conditions.

My role

Co-first author. I contributed to study execution, data collection, and writing, and helped drive the project from experiment to publication.