Respiratory Alkalosis Provokes Spike-Wave Discharges in Seizure-Prone Rats
2021
Hyperventilation reliably provokes seizures in patients diagnosed with absence epilepsy. Despite this predictable patient response, the mechanisms that enable hyperventilation to powerfully activate absence seizure-generating circuits remain entirely unknown. Using the WAG/Rij rat, an established rodent model of absence epilepsy, we demonstrate that absence seizures are highly sensitive to arterial carbon dioxide, suggesting that seizure-generating circuits are sensitive to pH. Moreover, hyperventilation consistently activated neurons within the intralaminar nuclei of the thalamus, a structure implicated in seizure generation. We show that intralaminar thalamus also contains pH-sensitive neurons. Collectively, these observations suggest that hyperventilation activates pH-sensitive neurons of the intralaminar nuclei to provoke absence seizures.
Keywords:
- Correction
- Source
- Cite
- Save
- Machine Reading By IdeaReader
100
References
0
Citations
NaN
KQI