Claudio Queiroz
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte – Natal, Brasil.
Instituto do Cérebro.
LECTURE: The Genesis of an Epileptic Hippocampus.
In rodents, systemic administration of kainic acid (KA) or pilocarpine (PILO) acutely produces long-lasting epileptiform discharges or Status Epilepticus (SE) leading to cell death, synaptic reorganization and spontaneous seizures. In both cases, it has been suggested that granule cells in the dentate gyrus are spared, and reorganization of their synaptic projections are responsible for generating a recurrent excitatory network at the gate of the hippocampus.
Claudio Queiroz will show in his talk the identification of the SE effects on the reorganization of mature and immature granule cells, their morphology and localization after intrahippocampal administration of KA or PILO in mice, using granule cells labeled with conditioned doublecortin-dependent expression of green fluorescent protein (GFP) at the chronic phase.
Local administration of both neurotoxins induced bilateral paroxysmal activity and hilar and CA1 cell death, among other alterations. It will be discussed how KA and PILO models of TLE will lead to different cellular alterations in the hippocampus and how these data need to be interpreted as complementary approaches to the study of epilepsy.