Comorbidities of early-onset temporal epilepsy: Cognitive, social, emotional, and morphologic dimensions.

Comorbidities of early-onset temporal epilepsy: Cognitive, social, emotional, and morphologic dimensions. Exp Neurol. 2019 Jul 03;:113005 Authors: Mikulecká A, Druga R, Stuchlík A, Mareš P, Kubová H Abstract Epilepsy, the most common neurologic disorder in childhood, is associated with a subset of psychiatric dysfunctions, including cognitive deficits, and alterations in emotionality (e.g., anxiety and depression) and social functioning. In the present study, we evaluated an integrative set of behavioral responses, including cognitive/socio-cognitive and emotional dimensions, using a number of behavioral paradigms in the LiCl/pilocarpine model of status epilepticus (SE) in rats. The aims of the study were to examine whether SE affects: 1) non-associative learning (habituation of exploratory behavior); 2) investigatory response to an indifferent stimulus object; 3) sociability/social novelty preference; 4) social recognition or discrimination; and 4) short- and long-term memory in the Morris water maze (MWM). Finally, we investigated the morphology of key brain structures involved in the examined behavioral dysfunctions. SE did not affect habituation to an open-field arena in juvenile (P25), adolescent (P32), or adult (P80) rats. SE rats spent less time in the central part of the arena. SE adolescent rats (P32) displayed a higher number of rearings with a shorter duration. SE rats displayed a markedly attenuated investigatory resp...
Source: Experimental Neurology - Category: Neurology Authors: Tags: Exp Neurol Source Type: research