Glutamate

Glutamate, GABA, and OCD — The Chemical Imbalance That Keeps Your Brain Hyperactive The relationship between glutamate and OCD is fundamentally a story of cortical hyperexcitation. 7-Tesla magnetic resonance spectroscopy has detected elevated glutamate and reduced GABA in the anterior cingulate cortex of individuals with OCD. The imbalance produces sustained firing in cortico-striatal-thalamo-cortical loops — the circuits whose terminations a healthy brain can release. ...

Why Your Brain Can’t Focus After Hours of Deep Work: The Neuroscience of Directed Attention Fatigue Directed attention fatigue is measurable glutamate accumulation in the lateral prefrontal cortex after prolonged cognitive effort — a neurochemical bottleneck that impairs control of effortful decisions, not a willpower failure. In a 2022 MindLAB Neuroscience review of the Wiehler et al. Current Biology study, the mechanism was finally nailed down: cognitive work biochemically alters the brain regions that govern sustained focus. ...