The T-type calcium channel antagonist Z944 rescues impairments in crossmodal and visual recognition memory in Genetic Absence Epilepsy Rats from Strasbourg

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Maternal immune activation during pregnancy in rats impairs working memory capacity of the offspring

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Performance of the trial-unique, delayed non-matching-to-location (TUNL) task depends on AMPA/Kainate, but not NMDA, ionotropic glutamate receptors in the rat posterior parietal cortex

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The T-type calcium channel antagonist Z944 disrupts prepulse inhibition in both epileptic and non-epileptic rats

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The T-type calcium channel antagonist, Z944, alters social behavior in Genetic Absence Epilepsy Rats from Strasbourg

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Fast oxygen dynamics as a potential biomarker for epilepsy

Canadian Institutes of Health Research (GCT: MOP#130495, JGH: MOP#125984).Peer ReviewedChanges in brain activity can entrain cerebrovascular dynamics, though this has not been extensively investigated in pathophysiology. We assessed whether pathological network activation (i.e. seizures) in the Genetic Absence Epilepsy Rat from Strasbourg (GAERS) could alter dynamic fluctuations in local oxygenation. Spontaneous absence seizures in an epileptic rat model robustly resulted in brief dips in cortical oxygenation and increased spectral oxygen power at frequencies greater than 0.08 Hz. Filtering oxygen data for these fast dynamics was sufficient to distinguish epileptic vs. non-epileptic rats. Furthermore, this approach distinguished brain regions with seizures from seizure-free brain regions in the epileptic rat strain. We suggest that fast oxygen dynamics may be a useful biomarker for seizure network identification and could be translated to commonly used clinical tools that measure cerebral hemodynamics

Sociability impairments in Genetic Absence Epilepsy Rats from Strasbourg: Reversal by the T-type calcium channel antagonist Z944

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Chronic maternal hyperglycemia induced during mid-pregnancy in rats increases RAGE expression, augments hippocampal excitability, and alters behavior of the offspring

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The Genetic Absence Epilepsy Rats from Strasbourg model of absence epilepsy exhibits alterations in fear conditioning and latent inhibition consistent with psychiatric comorbidities in humans

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The Rat Medial Prefrontal Cortex Exhibits Flexible Neural Activity States during the Performance of an Odor Span Task

Medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) activity is fundamental for working memory (WM), attention, and behavioral inhibition; however, a comprehensive understanding of the neural computations underlying these processes is still forthcoming. Toward this goal, neural recordings were obtained from the mPFC of awake, behaving rats performing an odor span task of WM capacity. Neural populations were observed to encode distinct task epochs and the transitions between epochs were accompanied by abrupt shifts in neural activity patterns. Putative pyramidal neuron activity increased earlier in the delay for sessions where rats achieved higher spans. Furthermore, increased putative interneuron activity was only observed at the termination of the delay thus indicating that local processing in inhibitory networks was a unique feature to initiate foraging. During foraging, changes in neural activity patterns associated with the approach to a novel odor, but not familiar odors, were robust. Collectively, these data suggest that distinct mPFC activity states underlie the delay, foraging, and reward epochs of the odor span task. Transitions between these states likely enables adaptive behavior in dynamic environments that place strong demands on the substrates of working memory