Morphometric abnormalities and hyperanxiety in genetically epileptic rats: A model of psychiatric comorbidity?

V Bouilleret; RE Hogan; D Velakoulis; MR Salzberg; L Wang; GF Egan; TJ O'Brien; NC Jones

Journal article

Morphometric abnormalities and hyperanxiety in genetically epileptic rats: A model of psychiatric comorbidity?

V Bouilleret, RE Hogan, D Velakoulis, MR Salzberg, L Wang, GF Egan, TJ O'Brien, NC Jones

Neuroimage | ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE | Published : 2009

DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2008.12.019

Abstract

Background: Imaging studies of epilepsy patients with comorbid affective disturbance demonstrate morphometric changes in limbic brain regions implicated in psychiatric disease. Genetic Absence Epilepsy Rats from Strasbourg (GAERS), specifically bred for their epilepsy phenotype, also exhibit elevated anxiety-like behaviors suggesting a common causality. Here we examined whether relevant cerebral morphological alterations exist in this rat strain using volumetric measurements and large deformation high dimensional mapping (HDM-LD), a tool recently validated to produce accurate three-dimensional surface representations of the hippocampus. Methods: Volumetric MRI and the Open Field test of anxi..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Dennis Velakoulis Author

Michael Salzberg Author

Nigel Jones Author

Related Projects (1)

The Effect of Stress and Hypercortisolaemia on Limbic Epileptogenesis & Affective Disorder.

This project has the potential to provide novel insights about the causal connections between stress, psychiatric illness (specifically anxi..

Grants

Awarded by National Health and Medical Research Council

Funding Acknowledgements

[ "This research was supported by an NHMRC project grant (# 400088) to TJO and MS and a Special Purposes Grant from the University of Melbourne to NJ.", "Financial disclosure", "The authors declare no conflicts financial or otherwise, associated with this work." ]