Hippocampal low-frequency stimulation prevents seizure generation in a mouse model of mesial temporal lobe epilepsy

  1. Enya Paschen  Is a corresponding author
  2. Claudio Elgueta
  3. Katharina Heining
  4. Diego M Vieira
  5. Piret Kleis
  6. Catarina Orcinha
  7. Ute Häussler
  8. Marlene Bartos
  9. Ulrich Egert
  10. Philipp Janz
  11. Carola A Haas  Is a corresponding author
  1. Medical Center - University of Freiburg, Faculty of Medicine, Germany
  2. University of Freiburg, Germany
  3. Faculty of Engineering, University of Freiburg, Germany

Abstract

Mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) is the most common form of focal, pharmacoresistant epilepsy in adults and is often associated with hippocampal sclerosis. Here, we established the efficacy of optogenetic and electrical low-frequency stimulation (LFS) in interfering with seizure generation in a mouse model of MTLE. Specifically, we applied LFS in the sclerotic hippocampus to study the effects on spontaneous subclinical and evoked generalized seizures. We found that stimulation at 1 Hz for one hour resulted in an almost complete suppression of spontaneous seizures in both hippocampi. This seizure-suppressive action during daily stimulation remained stable over several weeks. Furthermore, LFS for 30 min before a pro-convulsive stimulus successfully prevented seizure generalization. Finally, acute slice experiments revealed a reduced efficacy of perforant path transmission onto granule cells upon LFS. Taken together, our results suggest that hippocampal LFS constitutes a promising approach for seizure control in MTLE.

Data availability

The LFP dataset is available on Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/uk94m/. The source code files for the seizure detection algorithm is accessible at Zenodo (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4110614). The source code for the seizure detection algorithm (Heining et al., 2019) was developed using previously published LFP data (Froriep et al., 2012; Janz et al., 2017b).

The following data sets were generated

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Enya Paschen

    Experimental Epilepsy Research, Dept. of Neurosurgery, Medical Center - University of Freiburg, Faculty of Medicine, Freiburg, Germany
    For correspondence
    enya.paschen@uniklinik-freiburg.de
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Claudio Elgueta

    Institute for Physiology I, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Katharina Heining

    Laboratory for Biomicrotechnology, Dept. of Microsystems Engineering, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Diego M Vieira

    Biomicrotechnology, Dept. of Microsystems Engineering - IMTEK, Faculty of Engineering, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-8005-134X
  5. Piret Kleis

    Experimental Epilepsy Research, Dept. of Neurosurgery, Medical Center - University of Freiburg, Faculty of Medicine, Freiburg, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Catarina Orcinha

    Experimental Epilepsy Research, Dept. of Neurosurgery, Medical Center - University of Freiburg, Faculty of Medicine, Freiburg, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  7. Ute Häussler

    Experimental Epilepsy Research, Dept. of Neurosurgery, Medical Center - University of Freiburg, Faculty of Medicine, Freiburg, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  8. Marlene Bartos

    Institute for Physiology I, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-9741-1946
  9. Ulrich Egert

    Biomicrotechnology, Dept. of Microsystems Engineering - IMTEK, Faculty of Engineering, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-4583-0425
  10. Philipp Janz

    Experimental Epilepsy Research, Dept. of Neurosurgery, Medical Center - University of Freiburg, Faculty of Medicine, Freiburg, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  11. Carola A Haas

    Experimental Epilepsy Research, Dept. of Neurosurgery, Medical Center - University of Freiburg, Faculty of Medicine, Freiburg, Germany
    For correspondence
    carola.haas@uniklinik-freiburg.de
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-7022-4136

Funding

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (EXC 1086)

  • Ute Häussler
  • Marlene Bartos
  • Ulrich Egert
  • Carola A Haas

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (HA 1443/11-1)

  • Carola A Haas

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Reviewing Editor

  1. John R Huguenard, Stanford University School of Medicine, United States

Ethics

Animal experimentation: All animal procedures were carried out in accordance with the guidelines of the European Community's Council Directive of 22 September 2010 (2010/63/EU) and were approved by the regional council (Regierungspräsidium Freiburg).

Version history

  1. Received: December 17, 2019
  2. Accepted: December 13, 2020
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: December 22, 2020 (version 1)
  4. Version of Record published: January 11, 2021 (version 2)

Copyright

© 2020, Paschen et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 4,562
    views
  • 539
    downloads
  • 41
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Enya Paschen
  2. Claudio Elgueta
  3. Katharina Heining
  4. Diego M Vieira
  5. Piret Kleis
  6. Catarina Orcinha
  7. Ute Häussler
  8. Marlene Bartos
  9. Ulrich Egert
  10. Philipp Janz
  11. Carola A Haas
(2020)
Hippocampal low-frequency stimulation prevents seizure generation in a mouse model of mesial temporal lobe epilepsy
eLife 9:e54518.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.54518

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.54518

Further reading

    1. Neuroscience
    Tianhao Chu, Zilong Ji ... Si Wu
    Research Article

    Hippocampal place cells in freely moving rodents display both theta phase precession and procession, which is thought to play important roles in cognition, but the neural mechanism for producing theta phase shift remains largely unknown. Here, we show that firing rate adaptation within a continuous attractor neural network causes the neural activity bump to oscillate around the external input, resembling theta sweeps of decoded position during locomotion. These forward and backward sweeps naturally account for theta phase precession and procession of individual neurons, respectively. By tuning the adaptation strength, our model explains the difference between ‘bimodal cells’ showing interleaved phase precession and procession, and ‘unimodal cells’ in which phase precession predominates. Our model also explains the constant cycling of theta sweeps along different arms in a T-maze environment, the speed modulation of place cells’ firing frequency, and the continued phase shift after transient silencing of the hippocampus. We hope that this study will aid an understanding of the neural mechanism supporting theta phase coding in the brain.

    1. Neuroscience
    Josue M Regalado, Ariadna Corredera Asensio ... Priyamvada Rajasethupathy
    Research Article

    Learning requires the ability to link actions to outcomes. How motivation facilitates learning is not well understood. We designed a behavioral task in which mice self-initiate trials to learn cue-reward contingencies and found that the anterior cingulate region of the prefrontal cortex (ACC) contains motivation-related signals to maximize rewards. In particular, we found that ACC neural activity was consistently tied to trial initiations where mice seek to leave unrewarded cues to reach reward-associated cues. Notably, this neural signal persisted over consecutive unrewarded cues until reward-associated cues were reached, and was required for learning. To determine how ACC inherits this motivational signal we performed projection-specific photometry recordings from several inputs to ACC during learning. In doing so, we identified a ramp in bulk neural activity in orbitofrontal cortex (OFC)-to-ACC projections as mice received unrewarded cues, which continued ramping across consecutive unrewarded cues, and finally peaked upon reaching a reward-associated cue, thus maintaining an extended motivational state. Cellular resolution imaging of OFC confirmed these neural correlates of motivation, and further delineated separate ensembles of neurons that sequentially tiled the ramp. Together, these results identify a mechanism by which OFC maps out task structure to convey an extended motivational state to ACC to facilitate goal-directed learning.