Hypoglycemia-induced alterations in hippocampal intrinsic rhythms: Decreased inhibition, increased excitation, seizures and spreading depression.

Unlabelled: Seizures are the most common clinical presentation of severe hypoglycemia, usually as a side effect of insulin treatment for juvenile onset type 1 diabetes mellitus and advanced type 2 diabetes. We used the mouse thick hippocampal slice preparation to study the pathophysiology of hypoglycemia-induced seizures and the effects of severe glucose depletion on the isolated hippocampal rhythms from the CA3 circuitry.

Methods And Results: Dropping the glucose perfusate concentration from the standard 10 mM to 1 mM produced epileptiform activity in 14/16 of the slices.

In vitro recordings of human neocortical oscillations.

Electrophysiological oscillations are thought to create temporal windows of communication between brain regions. We show here that human cortical slices maintained in vitro can generate oscillations similar to those observed in vivo. We have characterized these oscillations using local field potential and whole-cell recordings obtained from neocortical slices acquired during epilepsy surgery.