Leakage of electromagnetic fields (EMF) from short-wave radiofrequency physiotherapeutic diathermies (SWDs) may cause health and safety hazards affecting unintentionally exposed workers (W) or general public (GP) members (assisting patient exposed during treatment or presenting there for other reasons). Increasing use of electronic active implantable medical devices (AIMDs), by patients, attend...

Absence seizures are a leading form of childhood epilepsy. Human and mouse P/Q-type calcium channel gene mutations initiate a complex absence epilepsy and ataxia phenotype, and in mice, secondarily elevate neuronal low-voltage-activated T-type calcium currents. These currents influence thalamocortical network activity and contribute to the generation of cortical spike-wave discharges (SWDs) ass...

A seizure is defined as an abnormal electrical discharge from the brain that results in the affected area losing its normal function and reacting uncontrollably. A particular subset of seizures , known as absence seizures , are characterized by brief, paroxysmal losses of consciousness that are associated with bilaterally synchronous 3 Hz spike and wave discharges (SWDs) on electroencephalograp...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is associated with an elevated risk for seizures that may be fundamentally connected to cognitive dysfunction. Supporting this link, many mouse models for AD exhibit abnormal electroencephalogram (EEG) activity in addition to the expected neuropathology and cognitive deficits. Here, we used a controllable transgenic system to investigate how network changes develop and ...

Depression and/or anxiety are major comorbidities of epilepsy. However, the contribution of absence epileptic discharges in psychiatric syndromes is inconclusive. This study aimed to clarify the influence of absence seizure in anxiety- and depression-like behaviors using normal Wistar rats and Long-Evans rats with spontaneous spike-wave discharges (SWDs). Anxiety-like behaviors were evaluated b...

Feedforward inhibition is essential to prevent run away excitation within the brain. Recent evidence suggests that a loss of feed-forward inhibition in the corticothalamocortical circuitry may underlie some absence seizures. However, it is unclear if this aberration is specifically linked to loss of synaptic excitation onto local fast-spiking parvalbumin-containing (PV+) inhibitory interneurons...

Spontaneous high-voltage rhythmic spike (HVRS) discharges at 6-12 Hz have been widely described in the electrocorticogram (EcoG) of Long-Evans rats. These ECoG oscillations have been proposed to reflect a state of attentive immobility allowing the optimization of sensory integration within the corticothalamic pathway. This hypothesis has been challenged by recent studies emphasizing similaritie...

Absence seizures are generalized, cortico-thalamo-cortical (CTC) high power electroencephalographic (EEG) or electrocorticographic (ECoG) events that initiate and terminate suddenly. ECoG recordings of absence seizures in animal models of genetic absence epilepsy show a sudden spike-wave-discharge (SWD) onset that rapidly emerges from normal ECoG activity. However, given that absence seizures o...

We showed previously that the number and time of spike-wave discharges (SWDs) were increased after intraperitoneal (i.p.) injection of lipopolysaccharide (LPS), an effect, which was completely abolished by cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) inhibitor indomethacin (IND) pretreatment in Wistar Albino Glaxo/Rijswijk (WAG/Rij) rats. These and other results suggest that injection of LPS to genetically absence...

WAG/Rij rats are genetic animal model of absence epilepsy with comorbidity of depression. The first spike-wave discharges (SWDs) in WAG/Rij rats begin to appear at the age of 2-3 months and are fully manifested by 5-6 months. Occurrence of SWDs in the EEG is the main index of absence epilepsy. Previously it has been shown that the extensive absence epilepsy in 5-6 months old WAG/Rij rats is acc...