Benzodiazepines are the most used drugs for improving sleep and reducing anxiety and stress. Another topic is the testing of drugs having benzodiazepine-like properties. It appeared to be a genetic model of absence epilepsy and basic data about the genesis of this type of epilepsy are already obtained. Deviant parts of the brain are currently studied. Pharmacological studies emphasizing the role of particular neurotransmitters trace out ways for the development of new rationalistic anti-epileptics.
Genetic studies point into the direction of a one-gene aberration.
Identification of this gene is a topic of current and future research. Cognitive studies revealed a correlation between the state of consciousness during an absence in man and changes in the EEG, offering a way for further insights between brain processes and cognition. The effects of the chronically use of psychoactive drugs on cognitive parameters are not yet clear and the biochemical mechanisms underlying the tolerance to drugs in also not fully understood. For a number of these effects, tolerance develops, but it is not clear whether this tolerance develops to all effects in the same time and the same quantity. Therefore, we want to determine tolerance profiles of these two classes of drugs, with respect to behavioral parameters and, furthermore, it is the intention to unravel the biochemical mechanisms underlying the acute drug effects as well as the psychological and physiological mechanisms underlying the development of tolerance.