Conditioning of ictal and interictal behaviors in rats by amygdala kindling : context as the conditional stimulus

• Main Author: Barnes, Steven John
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/10203

We assessed the ability of contextual conditional stimuli that are normally present during the course of kindling to modulate both motor seizures and interictal behavior. Rats received 53 stimulations to the left basolateral amygdala in one context (CS+) and 53 sham stimulations (The lead was attached but no current was delivered.) in another context (CS-), quasirandomly over 54 days. We observed 3 kinds of conditional effects. First, after several stimulations, less ambulatory activity, more freezing, and less rearing reliably occurred in the CS+ context than in the CS- context. Second, after 45 stimulations, all of the rats chose the CS- context over the CS+ context in a conditioned place-preference test. Third, when the rats were finally stimulated in the CS- context, their motor seizures were less severe in several respects: Latencies were longer, motor seizures were shorter, convulsive patterns were of a lower class, and there were fewer falls.