Implications of stimulus factors governing kindled seizure threshold

Abstract

Seizure threshold was measured in kindled rats by delivering trains of specified duration, consisting of bipolar pulses of specified width, at increasing current intensities, at specified intertrain intervals. The effect of decreasing pulse width was to elevate seizure threshold, but considerably less total energy was required to elicit a seizure. Seizure threshold was also found to be an inverse function of train duration, within asymptotic limits. Seizure "threshold" is not a single number but a function of stimulus-duration factors. In the case of train length, a putative threshold-altering agent may alter one or the other asymptotic value so that the curve is shifted upward or to the right.