Motor Cortical Kindling in Cats: A Comparison of Adult Cats and Kittens

Abstract

We compared the establishment of motor cortex kindling by daily electrical stimulation in adult cats and in 4-week-old kittens. All the adult cats and kittens examined reached a stable state of kindled seizures. There was no significant difference in afterdischarge (AD) thresholds, the course of clinical seizure development, or the number of stimuli required for the establishment of kindling between adult cats and kittens. During the development of the kindling stage, AD frequency increased in both adult cats and kittens, although AD duration did not show a clear change.

Mechanisms of Antidepressant Response to Electroconvulsive Therapy Studied With Perfusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging

“…Our group and others have reported links between ECT and motor/supplementary-motor regions (35,(68)(69)(70), which could be relevant to avolitional and amotivational symptoms often associated with depression (though complex goal-oriented and motor-planning behavior is typically linked to more rostrofrontal structures (71)). Animal studies also show that lateral somatomotor cortex is susceptible to "kindling" (i.e., the initiation of seizure activity with electrical stimulation) (72,73). Given the proximity of our reported effect in lateral somatomotor cortex to the vertex electrode, it is also possible that CBF increases in this region reflect the lasting neuroplastic effects of motor-cortex seizure activity initiated under or near the vertex electrode, and/or the effects of alternating current applied at the vertex electrode during treatment.…”

In vivo models of cortical acquired epilepsy

“…Neocortical kindling is characterized by a higher threshold to elicit acute seizures, an unstable seizure development, and for its difficulty to induce a generalized convulsive seizure state (Majkowski et al, 1981; Okamoto, 1982). However, neocortical kindling has been described in the visual (Baba, 1982; Ono et al, 1981; Wada et al, 1989), somatosensory (Majkowski et al, 1981), motor (Fukushima et al, 1987), auditory (Valentine et al, 2004), and associative cortices of the cat (Nita et al, 2008a; Nita et al, 2008b). Kindling was also demonstrated in different species including frogs, mice, gerbils, rats, rabbits, cats, dogs, rhesus monkeys, and baboons (reviewed in (McNamara et al, 1980)).…”