Authors :
María C. Rubio-Osornio, Instituto Nacional de Neurologia y Neuro; Elisa M. Taddei-Lizarraga, Instituto Nacional de Neurología y Neuro; Veronica Custodio, Instituto Nacional de Neurologia y Neuro; Jorge A. Acosta, Instituto Nacional de Neurologia y Neuro;
Rationale:
The cerebellum is a structure anatomically composed of cortex and deep nuclei. The cerebellar cortex includes Purkinje cells (PC) which exert inhibitory control of deep nuclei via GABA liberation. After total cerebellectomy and the resulting absence of PC, there is a marked increase in generalized seizure duration in electrical kindling models of temporal lobe epilepsy. While specific lesions of glutamatergic cells in deep nuclei (synaptic target of PC) reduce epileptic activity duration, there are also reports of a reduction in epileptic crises after the lesion of the synaptic fiber output of deep cerebellar nuclei. PC are susceptible to excitotoxicity due to an excessive liberation of glutamate by parallel fibers and a subsequent overactivation of N-Methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) and α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methylisoxazole-4-propionic acid (AMPA) receptors. The activation of said receptors leads to an excessive Ca2+ influx to PC. Due to the mechanisms previously described, we presume that epileptic activity is capable of modifying electrophysiological properties of PC. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate excitatory currents in kindled rats
Methods:
We used whole-cell patch clamp recordings to analyze differences in the excitatory currents of kindled rats when compared to a control group.
Results:
The analysis of our recordings found that PC of kindled rats present a higher excitatory input amplitude when compared to the control group
Conclusions:
Our data shows PC exert excitatory regulation that contributes to the facilitation of epileptic crises induced by the kindling model.
Funding: No funding