Fenfluramine increases survival and reduces markers of neurodegeneration in a mouse model of Dravet syndrome.

Objective: In patients with Dravet syndrome (DS), fenfluramine reduced convulsive seizure frequency and provided clinical benefit in nonseizure endpoints (e.g., executive function, survival).

LZW-Kernel: fast kernel utilizing variable length code blocks from LZW compressors for protein sequence classification.

Motivation: Bioinformatics studies often rely on similarity measures between sequence pairs, which often pose a bottleneck in large-scale sequence analysis.

Results: Here, we present a new convolutional kernel function for protein sequences called the Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW)-Kernel. It is based on code words identified with the LZW universal text compressor.

Electrogenic properties of the Na⁺/K⁺ ATPase control transitions between normal and pathological brain states.

Ionic concentrations fluctuate significantly during epileptic seizures. In this study, using a combination of in vitro electrophysiology, computer modeling, and dynamical systems analysis, we demonstrate that changes in the potassium and sodium intra- and extracellular ion concentrations ([K(+)] and [Na(+)], respectively) during seizure affect the neuron dynamics by modulating the outward Na(+)/K(+) pump current. First, we show that an increase of the outward Na(+)/K(+) pump current mediates termination of seizures when there is a progressive increase in the intracellular [Na(+)].

Dynamics of high-frequency synchronization during seizures.

Pathological synchronization of neuronal firing is considered to be an inherent property of epileptic seizures. However, it remains unclear whether the synchrony increases for the high-frequency multiunit activity as well as for the local field potentials (LFPs). We present spatio-temporal analysis of synchronization during epileptiform activity using wide-band (up to 2,000 Hz) spectral analysis of multielectrode array recordings at up to 60 locations throughout the mouse hippocampus in vitro.

Dynamics of epileptiform activity in mouse hippocampal slices.

Increase of the extracellular K( + ) concentration mediates seizure-like synchronized activities in vitro and was proposed to be one of the main factors underlying epileptogenesis in some types of seizures in vivo. While underlying biophysical mechanisms clearly involve cell depolarization and overall increase in excitability, it remains unknown what qualitative changes of the spatio-temporal network dynamics occur after extracellular K( + ) increase. In this study, we used multi-electrode recordings from mouse hippocampal slices to explore changes of the network activity during progressive increase of the extracellular K( + ) concentration.