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Article published in Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnmol.2022.868563/full

I am missing some context for this article, can someone help me out?

So it mentions Gabapentin being used to treat anxiety and how that affects mice willingness to be in groups. But Gabapentin is also used for nerve issues (right?) So did the researchers use Gabapentin initially for the nervous system, and then unexpectedly found the anxiety effects in terms of group exercise?

That is generally what happened - this lab previously found gabapentin could help restore upper limb function after a spinal cord injury, and was following up by testing whether gabapentin combined with classic post-SCI treadmill training could improve recovery even further. They found no additional forelimb function, but noticed mice that didn't get gabapentin were averse to rehab, and began looking for reasons behind that. There's more to learn about gabapentin's effects on mental health in SCI at the cellular level, but social support/group setting in lieu of the drug induced rehab participation.

Fascinating! Thanks for sharing and explaining

Thanks for your interest!

Whats the moral of the story?

Wr should all be doing gabapentin?

Not at all - just that gabapentin appears to have some beneficial effect on mental health, at least in the context of spinal cord injury, and that while investigating why that might be (and finding birth of new neurons is a likely factor), researchers found that social support improved injured animals' drive to participate in rehab.

I see

I read a similar report that stressed that social support reduces recidivism from drug rehabilitation

Seems like having a good social support system is a medicine all of its own

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Interesting from a canine perspective - dachshunds (and I'm sure other dogs) are often prescribed gabapentin, among other drugs, to help with back problems, and help alleviate the pain from them. Out dachshund bad back surgery in 2016, and used gabapentin on and off for a few years prior to needing surgery, and iirc also immediately after surgery during recovery. (Thankfully hasn’t needed it since though!) He tolerated the underwater treadmill during recovery, and it helped significantly. Makes me wonder if vets who deal with these kinds of issues have suspected the connection all along with gabapentin+spinal damage+treadmill work=improved outcomes.

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Gabapentin definitely increases motivation and social skills by a long shot. That's why some states made it schedule 5. People are starting to catch on that you can get a "high". Which is true but not extreme.

How did they get the spinal injury?...

The most intetesting conclusion we can draw from this article is that our morals have a long way to go. This is one of the more sad articles posted on here. Anyone congratulating themselves on intentionally harming animals "for science" or happy that they found such interesting behavior while torturing something should be ashamed. You can't do good by being bad. If you can't look past animal testing, you have a dull mind and no place in science.

Can't wait for all the standard horrible arguments defending this (and assuming I'm not a scientist or somehow unaware of how most of them explain this to themselves) especially in light of the torrent of anti vegan pseudoscience posted to this sub lately.

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Researchers need to spend more time in Gabapentin forums to see the actual effects on humans and animal bodies. Gabapentin can cause mental health and neurological issues, as well as enhancing pain, causing dystonia, etc. There are NIH studies that discuss this.