Modelling Epileptic Activity in Hippocampal CA3

This chapter is about developing a computational model of the mechanism of epileptic activity generation in the hippocampal CA3 subfield, a very well-known area that initiates it presumably due to high recurrent connectivity between its constituent neurons, specifically, epileptic activity due to degeneration of OLM interneurons. The model consists of 800 pyramidal neurons, 200 basket and 200 OLM interneurons. The degeneration of OLM interneurons primarily leads to reduced dendritic inhibition on pyramidal neurons. What this leads to is a cascade of network changes including chemical changes as validated by published literature. The biophysical features of the model are explained, and how these changes lead to epileptic activity is described and modelled. Such a proposed model would help to investigate if the progression to epileptic activity generation can be contained at some stage. This could imply a therapeutic strategy for validation using further experimental studies, hence the relevance of the model.