Kindling Research: Dr. John Pinel

[RobinN]

Kindling

I would love some discussion about kindling.

As the name "Kindling" suggests, a small spark applied to tinder will ignite a flame that eventually can grow into a roaring bonfire. Similarly, a small electrical stimulus, just large enough to trigger a brief "afterdischarge" or burst of epileptiform activity, if repeatedly applied, will eventually generate seizures that can lead to fully generalized behavioral convulsions. As such, kindling is one of the best models of secondary generalized temporal lobe epilepsy, and much of our understanding of how epilepsy works comes from the study of kindling.

http://homepages.nyu.edu/~eh597/kindle.htm


http://www.headlice.org/lindane/health/toxicology/seizures.htm
(don't be misled by the address, it really is a decent link)

ManTech Environmental Technology, Inc., Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA.

Kindling is a model of epilepsy whereby repeated administration of brief low-intensity trains of electrical stimulation come to elicit electrographic and behavioral manifestations of seizure. In the absence of overt tissue damage, an animal that has been kindled is rendered in a permanent state of increased susceptibility to seizures. A number of persistent biochemical and physiological alterations in function accompany kindling, some of which may impact upon behavior of the organism for a long period of time despite the absence of further seizure activation. The sensitivity of limbic structures to kindling may contribute to the behavioral categories of cognition and affect that are particularly impacted by the kindling process. The increased proclivity for seizure disorders that characterizes kindling is not restricted to the initial kindling stimulus, but generalizes to other agents with convulsive properties. This paper provides an overview of the phenomenology of kindling, describes some of the conditions necessary for its induction, and some of the functional alterations that accompany its development and endure when overt convulsive behavior has subsided. Finally, a series of studies in our laboratory is presented which provides evidence of chemically induced kindling by repeated low-level exposure to some pesticides, namely those of the chlorinated hydrocarbon class.

Kindling was also the first neuroplasticity phenomenon suggested to be useful for studying memory processes (Goddard and Douglas, 1975). It may sound odd to suggest that epileptic seizure activity could relate to learning, but its possible that the separate cascade of mechanisms constituting kindling and learning intersect and share a number of common mechanisms. For this reason both kindling and learning are viewed as phenomena of neuroplasticity.

Goddard, G.V. and Douglas, R.M. (1975). Does the engram of kindling model the engram of normal long term memory. Jounral of Canadian Science and Neurology, Nov, 385-394.

The above interests me, as memory is a learning deficit of my daughter. She seems to get lost in a circular mode of operation, and climbs into a mental box.

 

[Bernard]

I touched on this briefly in the Proactive Prescription for Epilepsy thread:

While science has not unlocked all the secrets of brain function to date, we do know that the brain is flexible and adaptable. It grows new neuronal pathways to process information or thoughts. This is important with regards to seizures in that the brain can "learn to seize" in a process called kindling if seizures are allowed to continue uncontrolled. It also offers hope though that the brain can learn how to function without seizing when seizures are fully controlled for several years (2 years is usually the milestone where neurologists may test for normalized brain function to possibly reduce/eliminate medication).

The Healing Power of Neurofeedback: The Revolutionary LENS Technique for Restoring Optimal Brain Function references studies done on mice showing how the neurons in the brain develop or strengthen pathways in the brain according to the stimulous/environment. I don't have the book handy or I would detail them for you.

 

[RobinN]

Bernard, would you recommend this book?

 

[Bernard]

Yes, it is well worth a read - especially if you are interested in neurofeedback or Ochs' LENS system. I should add it to the resources page...

it's been added

 

[Zoe]

I will look for the book too. I hope you will put it on the research page.

 

[brain]

I have the book and it is recommended
reading - there is a posting on it but
I can't find my own thread LOL!

 

[Zoe]

Dr. John Pinel at the University of British Columbia gave me permission to repost this description of his research on kindling, posted below.
In addition: below is a link to Dr. Eric Hargreave's with an article on kindling and his research which Robin had posted earlier. This is very good reading and important information for understanding how seizures may develop. Behavior therapy, including neurofeedback has the effect of counteracting or overcoming kindling.
The kindling process is considered "sensitizing," condtioning seizures to happen. Behavior therapies, can lead to desensitizing, unlearning the conditioning, or learning other behaviors to stop the seizures and overcome the effects of kindling.



Conditioned Effects of Repeated Seizures


John P.J. Pinel
Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts

Details:
For the past 40 years, research on epilepsy has focused on the kindling phenomenon, with more than 10,000 studies of kindling published. In a typical kindling study, a small brief electrical stimulation is applied to a seizure-prone area of the brain of laboratory animals, once each day. At first, the stimulations have no observable effect, but eventually they start to elicit mild tremors, and with each successive stimulation, they grow progressively worse.
Ultimately, after several hundred stimulations, the kindled animals become truly epileptic: they periodically display seizures even when all stimulations have been curtailed. Kindling has been of major interest because the progressive development of kindled seizures mirrors the development of some kinds of clinical epilepsy, and because the changes in the brain that underlie the kindling effect are similar in major respects to the changes that are thought to mediate memory.

The research of UBC Biopsychologist John Pinel is showing that rats learn to anticipate the occurrence of the stimulations and the elicited seizures by Pavlovian conditioning. These anticipations have a marked effect on the rats’ behaviour and on the severity of seizures they experience.

This project, which began in 1998 under funding from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, is the first to provide such clear evidence of the role of expectation on seizure activity. Similar conditioning mechanisms may explain why some epileptic patients tend to be particularly susceptible to attacks when they are in particular situations.
http://www.arts.ubc.ca/index.php?id=467&backPID=470&tt_news=126
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Link to Eric Hargreave's page:

http://homepages.nyu.edu/~eh597/

 

[RobinN]

I thought I would bump this up for those of you not familiar with the research on kindling.

 

[Bernard]

You forgot to use the [ame=http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1153869/history_eraser_button_ren_and_stimpy/]jolly, candy like, red button[/ame]: :bump:

 

[RobinN]

I was lazy and didn't want to search for it, and my mind refuses to memorize the codes.

 

[Wally]

I thought I would bump this up for those of you not familiar with the research on kindling.

Thanks for that Robin. My Neuro talks about this everytime I see him. I need to get that book.

 

[RobinN]

Yes it is time that I get that book too. I just finished:

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Symphony-Brain-Evolution-Wave-Biofeedback/dp/0802143814/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217793053&sr=8-1"]Amazon.com: A Symphony in the Brain: The Evolution of the New Brain Wave Biofeedback (9780802143815): Jim Robbins: Books@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ofA9CVF-L.@@AMEPARAM@@51ofA9CVF-L[/ame]

Which I recommend if you are considering Neurofeedback, or just want to know more about it.
I am told that the second edition is coming out soon, so it might be worth waiting for that.