Relation of the enhancement of entorhinal tetanic responses by 50-Hz amygdala stimulation to the progression of kindling in the rat

Abstract

We recorded entorhinal tetanic responses to 50-Hz kindling stimulations applied at the amygdala in conscious rats, which produced facilitation and depression during the train pulses, in order to analyze the relationship of the changes in the tetanic responses to the development of both after-discharges (ADs) and behavioral seizures. Facilitation was always produced in the earlier tetanic responses and was followed by depression which reached a quasi-steady level in the later tetanic responses during each kindling stimulation. To estimate the changes in magnitude of the excitatory synaptic activation in the tetanic responses, with reference to the development of seizure stages, tetanic responses which produced the same behavioral seizure stage in each rat were averaged and the area between the negative (excitatory) potentials and the baseline of the averaged tetanic response was measured in terms of mV x ms. Magnitudes of the averaged negative components were significantly enhanced with an increase in the order of seizure stages in eight rats ( P < 0.01). In addition, the mean magnitude of the averaged negative components had a linear correlation ( r = 0.95, P < 0.05) with the mean AD duration with reference to the order of seizure stages in the eight rats. The magnitude of the positive (inhibitory) component in the averaged tetanic responses was also measured and found to decrease with an increase in the seizure stages ( P < 0.01). The magnitude of the negative component in the test responses to single (0.3 Hz) stimuli just before kindling stimulations also increased with an increase in the order of seizure stages, indicating long term potentiation of the responses by kindling stimulations. We concluded from the results that the enhancement of facilitation of the excitatory synaptic activation and the reduction of the inhibitory synaptic activation in entorhinal tetanic responses by 50-Hz amygdala kindling stimulation is involved in the electrophysiological source of the progression of kindling epilepsy.