INVESTIGATION OF ACUTE AND CHRONIC SEIZURE MODELS IN ZEBRAFISH WITH HIGH-THROUGHPUT BEHAVIOURAL AND NEURAL SCREENING

Zebrafish have become an increasingly popular model animal for seizures and epilepsy. Various pharmacological and genetic models are utilised for both discovering new anti-epileptic drugs and investigating fundamental mechanisms regulating neural excitability, seizures, and epilepsy. The aim of this study is to develop multiple pharmacologically induced acute and chronic seizure and epilepsy models, in order to make use of these models for high-throughput behavioural screens and for functional brain imaging. We showed that several parameters of locomotor behaviours and spatial exploration are altered in seizure and epilepsy models, both during spontaneous and evoked behaviours. Our preliminary results revealed that photic stimulation causes certain behavioural patterns in zebrafish treated with various drugs. We are currently studying how these neural and behavioural activity patterns are characterised in pre-treated zebrafish with a number of different drug regimens, both in acute and chronic phases using evoked and spontaneous experimental settings via high-throughput behavioural screens. These models are aimed at providing a platform for the study of novel anti-epileptic compounds and understanding the long-term dynamics of epilepsy.