The Research Of Responsive Stimulation On Penicillin Induced Absence Epilepsy In Rats

Absence Epilepsy (AE) is a severe neurological disease which is predominant in children and juveniles. AE arises from thalamocortical dysfunction, which mediates by the interplay between somatosensory cortex and thalamus. Reparative surgery of cortex or thalamus may carry significant risks and irreversibly punch the sensory nervous system. Therefore, future investigations of alternative therapies are now imminent in dealing with intractable epilepsy.In this study, we employed responsive electrical stimulation and optogenetics technique to the control of penicillin induced AE. Furthermore, electrolytic lesions of ventral posterior thalamus were applied to explore etiology and pathophysiology mechanism of ventroposteromedial nuclei and ventroposterolateral nuclei in pathogenesis of absence epilepsy. The concrete contents are as follows:(1) Absence epilepsy was induced by the injection of penicillin solution into the right somatosensory cortex. Responsive neurostimulation was randomly applied to the right somatosensory cortex according to visual detection of epileptic bursts. As a result, electric stimulation significantly reduced the duration of seizures.(2) Optogenetics technique was employed in modulating the activity of thalamo-cortical pyramidal neurons, to explore the possibility of optogenetic control of thalamus and ipsilateral somatosensory cortex. After Penicillin injection, randomly suppression of thalamo-cotical neurons was applied on-demand to intervene the ongoing seizures. Consequently, under epilepsy-free conditions, yellow laser stimulation could simultaneously control the activity of thalamus and cortex. However, after penicillin administration, no sufficient thalamic inhibition was observed in responsive inhibition thalamo-cortical neurons.(3) Electrolytic lesions of ventral posterior thalamus were adopted to investigate pathophysiological function of thalamo-cortical connections in penicillin epilepsy model. As a result, the electrophysiological characteristics of AE significantly altered, including the average seizure durations and rates. Above all, based on nueromodulation, responsive electric stimulation and optogenetic tools were applied in the treatment of AE. The results demonstrated that responsive neurostmulation was proved to be effective in AE attenuation and that ventrobasal thalamus played an important role in seizures. This study provided an illuminating solution for clinical treatment of AE and provided a beneficial reference for the study on anti-epilepsy drugs development or the mechanism of AE.