ABSTRACT: In the process of developing safer general anesthetics, isomers of anesthetic ethers and barbiturates have been discovered that act as convulsants and inhibitors of ?-aminobutyric acid type A receptors (GABAARs) rather than potentiators. It is unknown whether these convulsants act as negative allosteric modulators by binding to the intersubunit anesthetic-binding sites in the GABAAR transmembrane domain (Chiara, D. C., Jayakar, S. S., Zhou, X., Zhang, X., Savechenkov, P. Y., Bruzik, K. S., Miller, K. W., and Cohen, J. B. (2013) J. Biol. Chem. 288, 19343-19357) or to known convulsant sites in the ion channel or extracellular domains. Here, we show that S-1-methyl-5-propyl-5-(m-trifluoromethyl-diazirynylphenyl) barbituric acid (S-mTFD-MPPB), a photoreactive analog of the convulsant barbiturate S-MPPB, inhibits ?1?3?2 but potentiates ?1?3 GABAAR responses. In the ?1?3?2 GABAAR, S-mTFD-MPPB binds in the transmembrane domain with high affinity to the ?(+)-?(-) subunit interface site with negative energetic coupling to GABA binding in the extracellular domain at the ?(+)-?(-) subunit interfaces. GABA inhibits S-[(3)H]mTFD-MPPB photolabeling of ?2Ser-280 (?M2-15') in this site. In contrast, within the same site GABA enhances photolabeling of ?3Met-227 in ?M1 by an anesthetic barbiturate, R-[(3)H]methyl-5-allyl-5-(m-trifluoromethyl-diazirynylphenyl)barbituric acid (mTFD-MPAB), which differs from S-mTFD-MPPB in structure only by chirality and two hydrogens (propyl versus allyl). S-mTFD-MPPB and R-mTFD-MPAB are predicted to bind in different orientations at the ?(+)-?(-) site, based upon the distance in GABAAR homology models between ?2Ser-280 and ?3Met-227. These results provide an explanation for S-mTFD-MPPB inhibition of ?1?3?2 GABAAR function and provide a first demonstration that an intersubunit-binding site in the GABAAR transmembrane domain binds negative and positive allosteric modulators.