Paroxysmal depolarization shift in human

01/29/2020

Dániel Fabó¹

¹ National Institute of Clinical Neurosciences, Budapest, Hungary

The neuronal background of epilepsy was first hypothesized by Hughlings Jackson in the late 18th supposing that epilepsy is the name for occasional, sudden, excessive, rapid, and local discharge of grey matter”. The first experimental evidence to this hypothesis came from acute seizure models of cats some 60 years later demonstrating long lasting neuronal bursts riding on top of sharp EEG transients named paroxysmal depolarizing shifts. Although another 60 years have passed since this discovery, the diagnosis of epilepsy in humans still stands on field potential transients and rhythms, while the detection of rapid and excessive discharges of the gray matter” is not considered at all. On the other hand, experimental data from human in vivo samples resulted controversial evidences about the existence of deliberated neuronal firing interictally or even ictally. In this presentation, we attempt to review the animal models compared to human neuronal recordings in order to reveal the common neuronal mechanism of seizure disorders.