Electrocorticographic (ECoG) activity was recorded for up to 129 h from 12 acutely brain-injured human patients using six platinum electrodes placed near foci of damaged cortical tissue. The method probes ECoG activity in the immediate vicinity of the injured cortex and in adjacent supposedly healthy tissue. Six out of twelve patients displayed a total of 73 spontaneous episodes of spreading de...

Spreading depolarization (SD) is a slowly propagating wave of near complete depolarizations of neurons and glia. Previous studies have reported large GABA releases during SD, but there is limited understanding of how GABA release and receptor activation are regulated and influence the propagating SD wavefront, as well as an excitatory phase immediately following the passage of SD. The present s...

Simultaneous changes in ion concentrations, glutamate, and cell volume together with exchange of matter between cell network and vasculature are ubiquitous in numerous brain pathologies. A complete understanding of pathological conditions as well as normal brain function, therefore, hinges on elucidating the molecular and cellular pathways involved in these mostly interdependent variations. In ...

Recurrent waves of spreading depolarization (SD) spontaneously occur minutes after the onset of focal ischemia in the brain and keep generating for a number of days to follow. It has become widely accepted that ischemia-related SDs are part of the pathophysiology of cerebrovascular diseases and predict worse outcome. SDs may exacerbate ischemic injury via related atypical hemodynamic responses....

Introduction There is strong evidence suggesting detrimental effects of cortical spreading depolarization (CSD) in patients with acute ischemic stroke and severe traumatic brain injury. Previous studies implicated scalp electroencephalography (EEG) features to be correlates of CSD based on retrospective analysis of EEG epochs after having detected "CSD" in time aligned electrocorticography. We ...

Spreading depolarization (SD) is a complex neural phenomenon which we still do not fully understand. Fifty years after its initial discovery by Le~ao, evidence suggested that SD may not occur in humans, however it is now well established that SD underlies a spectrum of human brain pathologies from migraine with aura to stroke and traumatic brain injury. It is characterized by substantial ion cu...

Cell volume changes are ubiquitous in normal and pathological activity of the brain. Nevertheless, we know little about the dynamics of cell and tissue swelling, and the differential changes in the volumes of neurons and glia during pathological states such as spreading depolarizations (SD) under ischemic and non-ischemic conditions, and epileptic seizures. By combining the Hodgkin-Huxley type ...

Spreading depolarization (SD) is generated in the central nervous systems of both vertebrates and invertebrates. SD manifests as a propagating wave of electrical depression caused by a massive redistribution of ions. Mammalian SD underlies a continuum of human pathologies from migraine to stroke damage, whereas insect SD is associated with environmental stress-induced neural shutdown. The gener...