Abstract
About 10 % of people will experience at least one seizure during lifespan, and one third of them will develop epilepsy. Antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) have hugely ameliorated the lives of people with epilepsy; however, 30–40 % of those individuals have seizures that cannot be totally controlled by medication. Ideally, one would like to prevent epilepsy in those with known risk but such therapies do not exist. Currently, treatment is exclusively based on the suppression of seizures by AEDs after epilepsy has already developed. Thus, understanding the basic mechanisms of epileptogenesis and epileptogenicity represents a priority for epilepsy research. In this respect, studies in human beings have a very limited capacity to explain such basic mechanisms. Consequently, animal models are invaluable tools of investigation. In this context, the wild Neotropical rodents Proechimys have been investigated in different experimental epilepsy paradigms. Interestingly, findings pointed to natural endogenous antiepileptogenic mechanisms in these rodents. Accordingly, Proechimys have been proposed as an animal model of resistance to epilepsy. This chapter sheds light to the potential use of these Neotropical animals in neuroscience research.
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