Related Experiment Video
Updated: Mar 15, 2026
Combining Imaging and Electrophysiology to Visualize and Record Spreading Depolarizations in Mice
Published on: October 4, 2024
Heterogeneous incidence and propagation of spreading depolarizations
Dan Kaufmann1, Jeremy J Theriot1,2, Jekaterina Zyuzin2
11 Department of Neurology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
Abstract:
Spreading depolarizations are implicated in a diverse set of neurologic diseases. They are unusual forms of nervous system activity in that they propagate very slowly and approximately concentrically, apparently not respecting the anatomic, synaptic, functional, or vascular architecture of the brain. However, there is evidence that spreading depolarizations are not truly concentric, isotropic, or homogeneous, either in space or in time. Here we present evidence from KCl-induced spreading depolarizations, in mouse and rat, in vivo and in vitro, showing the great variability that these depolarizations can exhibit. This variability can help inform the mechanistic understanding of spreading depolarizations, and it has implications for their phenomenology in neurologic disease.
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