He has made seminal contributions to the understanding of brain activity in health and disease and notably autism, epilepsies and related infantile disorders.

Upon his return to France, he was engaged by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), where he initially headed a team studying epilepsy at the Alfred Fessart Laboratory of Nervous Physiology.

[1] His Post doc in University of Cambridge  at the MRC unit of neurochemistry directed by Prof L Iversen was centered on the amygdala where he determined with R Zigmond the levels of Gabaergic and cholinergic markers in substructures of the complex.

[4] In parallel, he recorded with I Kanazawa  and JS Kelly neuron in the amygdala in vivo  reporting for the first time their activity and responses to a variety of neuroleptics.

Yehezkel Ben-Ari also reported -with Kanazawa and Kelly-  in Nature the striking effects of  acetylcholine on neurons of the reticularis nucleus – a major structure that controls sensory inputs to the cortex.

Yehezkel Ben-Ari then spent the next decades investigating the roles, mechanisms of the developmental GABA shift -that was validated in all animal species from worms to humans- and its clinical implications.

He also discovered that parturition and birth are associated with an abrupt transient reduction of chloride (and polarity of GABA actions) due to the hormone oxytocin that triggers delivery.

These studies led to a flurry of investigations on parturition and birth and the roles of Oxytocin and the impact of these alterations in the pathogenesis of brain disorders.

[18] However, bumetanide responders can be identified in large trials using EEG measures or inflammatory signals suggesting that the treatment is efficient in subpopulations of patients.

[19] If bumetanide is indeed efficient in a subpopulation of children it is essential to identify this population to enhance success of future trials and attenuate the severity of clinical signs in a disorder that is orphan of treatments.

Interestingly, impacting parameters included expected ones -sex, viral infections etc.- and unexpected ones- earlier upside-down head rotation, femur size 2nd trimester etc.