Abstracts

Rationale: Post-traumatic epilepsy (PTE) is one of the serious complications after traumatic brain injury, accounting for 20% of acquired epilepsy. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the changes of ECoG, behavior, and histomorphology in rats after chronic TBI.

Methods: We quantified spike-wave-discharges (SWDs) in rats with different degree TBI, compared them with sham and age-matched control rats. We also evaluated the cortical deletion, glial cell proliferation and mossy fiber sprouting in chronic TBI.

Results: Large-amplitude and frequent SWDs of 7-8Hz were observed at frontal recording sites, which were correlated with the degree and time of injury. SWDs were also present in the sham group with a shorter duration and less frequent, while they were not detected in the age-matched control group. Most SWD events in the sham and TBI groups started synchronously, and few originated asynchronously. SWDs were often accompanied by behavioral arrest, vibrissa extension, and slight facial twitching. Sensory stimuli, such as a click, can interrupt the development of SWDs. The rats subjected to moderate and severe TBI exhibited significantly impaired neurologic function, which was accompanied by marked cortex injury, hippocampus deformation, gliocyte proliferation and mossy fiber sprouting.

Conclusions: SWDs have many similarities with absence seizures and may be a nonconvulsive characteristic of post-traumatic epilepsy.

Funding: Please list any funding that was received in support of this abstract.: This work was supported by grants from National Key R&D Program of China (NO. 2017YFC1307501), Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Cooperative Basic Research Program (NO. H2018206435) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81870935) to JW.