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Related Experiment Video

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Electromagnetic Source Imaging in Presurgical Evaluation of Children with Drug-Resistant Epilepsy

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Larger cortical motor maps after seizures.

Amy K Henderson¹, Michael A Galic, Karim Fouad

¹Hotchkiss Brain Institute, University of Calgary, 3330 Hospital Dr. N.W. Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

The European Journal of Neuroscience

|July 14, 2011

Summary

Seizures cause motor maps in the brain to expand, affecting areas beyond the forelimb. This expansion, observed in rats, may explain movement disturbances in epilepsy patients.

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Epilepsy Research
Motor Cortex Plasticity

Background:

Motor map expansion is observed in epilepsy.
Previous studies showed forelimb motor cortex enlargement after seizures.
The alteration of other movement representations remains unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate if movement representations beyond the forelimb enlarge after cortical seizures.
To test the hypothesis that cortical seizures lead to widespread motor map alterations.

Main Methods:

Long Evans Hooded rats underwent callosal kindling (or sham) for 20 sessions.
Intracortical microstimulation was used to map jaw, neck, forelimb, hindlimb, trunk, and tail movements.
Map areas, multiple movement sites, and movement thresholds were analyzed.

Main Results:

Several movement representations showed significantly larger total map areas after kindling.
Movement representations were found more posterior in kindled rats compared to controls.
Kindled rats exhibited more multiple movement sites and lower movement thresholds.

Conclusions:

Cortical seizures lead to the enlargement of multiple motor map areas.
Motor map reorganization, including overlap and expansion into non-responsive sites, occurs post-seizure.
These findings suggest a potential mechanism for interictal motor disturbances in epilepsy.