PILOCARPINE SEIZURES CAUSE AGE-DEPENDENT IMPAIRMENT IN AUDITORY LOCATION DISCRIMINATION

• Published in: Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior 2005-11, Vol.84 (3), p.357-370
• Main Authors: Neill, John C., Liu, Zhao, Mikati, Mohammad, Holmes, Gregory L.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescents; Adults; Age; Age Differences; Aging - drug effects; Animal Behavior; Animals; Animals, Newborn; Auditory Discrimination; Auditory Perception - drug effects; Auditory Stimuli; Behavioral Science Research; Brain; Brain Mapping; Cell Survival - drug effects; Convulsions & seizures; Developmental Disabilities; Discrimination Learning - drug effects; Electroencephalography - drug effects; Epilepsy; hippocampus; Hippocampus - drug effects; Hippocampus - pathology; lever press; Male; Muscarinic Agonists - toxicity; Neurological Impairments; Neurons - drug effects; Neurons - pathology; Neurosciences; Pilocarpine - toxicity; Psychomotor Performance - drug effects; Rats; Rats, Sprague-Dawley; Reaction Time - drug effects; Rodents; Section I: Effects of Drugs and Genetics on Common Operant Tasks; Seizures; Sound Localization - drug effects; Status Epilepticus - chemically induced; Status Epilepticus - pathology
• ISSN: 0022-5002; 1938-3711; 0022-5002
• DOI: 10.1901/jeab.2005.84-04

Children who have status epilepticus have continuous or rapidly repeating seizures that may be life‐threatening and may cause life‐long changes in brain and behavior. The extent to which status epilepticus causes deficits in auditory discrimination is unknown. A naturalistic auditory location discrimination method was used to evaluate this question using an animal model of status epilepticus. Male Sprague‐Dawley rats were injected with saline on postnatal day (P) 20, or a convulsant dose of pilocarpine on P20 or P45. Pilocarpine on either day induced status epilepticus; status epilepticus at P45 resulted in CA3 cell loss and spontaneous seizures, whereas P20 rats had no cell loss or spontaneous seizures. Mature rats were trained with sound‐source location and sound‐silence discriminations. Control (saline P20) rats acquired both discriminations immediately. In status epilepticus (P20) rats, acquisition of the sound‐source location discrimination was moderately impaired. Status epilepticus (P45) rats failed to acquire either sound‐source location or sound‐silence discriminations. Status epilepticus in rat causes an age‐dependent, long‐term impairment in auditory discrimination. This impairment may explain one cause of impaired auditory location discrimination in humans.