Temporal lobe epileptics often experience interictal (i.e., between-seizure) emotional
disturbances such as fear and anxiety. Despite the problem that these disturbances present,
little progress has been made in characterizing their nature and etiology because they are not
amenable to experimental analysis in clinical populations. Accordingly, the general purpose
of the experiments in this thesis was to demonstrate the potential of long-term amygdala
kindling in rats as a model of the interictal hyperemotionality of temporal lobe epileptics.
Seven experiments comprise this thesis. Experiments 1 and 2 established that longterm
amygdala kindling (i.e., 100 stimulations) results in large and reliable increases in
emotionality. In Experiment 1, the long-term amygdala-kindled rats displayed more
resistance to capture from an open field and more open-arm activity on an elevated plus
maze than did the sham-stimulated rats; in Experiment 2, the magnitude of this
hyperemotionality was shown to be dependent on the number of amygdala stimulations that
the rats received. Experiment 3 showed that kindling-induced hyperemotionality is
enduring; the hyperemotionality present 1 day after the final stimulation did not decline
significantly over the ensuing month although some amelioration of symptoms was
observed. Experiment 4 established that kindling-induced hyperemotionality is not unique to
amygdala stimulation. Although increases in emotionality were greatest in amygdalakindled
rats, hippocampal-kindled, but not caudate-kindled, rats also displayed significant
increases. Experiments 5 and 6 showed that kindling-induced hyperemotionality is
fundamentally defensive in nature. In Experiment 5, amygdala-kindled rats displayed high
levels of emotionality in an unfamiliar, but not in a familiar, situation; in Experiment 6,
amygdala-kindled rats displayed more defensive, but less aggressive behaviour, in their
interactions with other rats. Finally, Experiment 7 showed that 8-OH-DPAT binding to
serotonin 5HT1A receptors is increased in the dentate gyrus of amygdala-kindled rats, but
not in the amygdala, periaqueductal grey, perirhinal cortex, or CA1 or CA3 hippocampal
subfields.
Together, the results of these experiments establish the potential of long-term
amygdala kindling as a useful animal model of interictal emotionality in temporal lobe
epileptics.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/6645 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Kalynchuk, Lisa Emily |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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