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Psychiatric research has benefitted enormously from insights derived from simple animal models, for example Eric Kandel's Nobel Prize–winning work on learning in Aplysia. The current investigators' research into repetitive behaviors in the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans might lead to insights into human disorders like tics and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
Worms lacking GLT-1, a protein produced in worms' astrocyte-like cells that is usually responsible for clearing excess glutamate from synapses, exhibited a peculiar, repetitive behavior, in which animals constantly reversed course, going back and forth, suggestive of movements found in Tourette syndrome or OCD. But this insufficient clearance spillover did not result in steady-sta…