Wang Ying, Wang Yi, Chen Zhong
College of Pharmaceutial Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China.
Zhejiang Da Xue Xue Bao Yi Xue Ban. 2017 Jan 25;46(1):15-21. doi: 10.3785/j.issn.1008-9292.2017.02.03.
Epilepsy is a chronic neurological disorder, which is not only related to the imbalance between excitatory glutamic neurons and inhibitory GABAergic neurons, but also related to abnormal central cholinergic regulation. This article summarizes the scientific background and experimental data about cholinergic dysfunction in epilepsy from both cellular and network levels, further discusses the exact role of cholinergic system in epilepsy. In the cellular level, several types of epilepsy are believed to be associated with aberrant metabotropic muscarinic receptors in several different brain areas, while the mutations of ionotropic nicotinic receptors have been reported to result in a specific type of epilepsy-autosomal dominant nocturnal frontal lobe epilepsy. In the network level, cholinergic projection neurons as well as their interaction with other neurons may regulate the development of epilepsy, especially the cholinergic circuit from basal forebrain to hippocampus, while cholinergic local interneurons have not been reported to be associated with epilepsy. With the development of optogenetics and other techniques, dissect and regulate cholinergic related epilepsy circuit has become a hotspot of epilepsy research.
癫痫是一种慢性神经疾病，不仅与兴奋性谷氨酸能神经元和抑制性γ-氨基丁酸能神经元之间的失衡有关，还与中枢胆碱能调节异常有关。本文从细胞和网络水平总结了癫痫中胆碱能功能障碍的科学背景和实验数据，进一步探讨了胆碱能系统在癫痫中的确切作用。在细胞水平上，几种类型的癫痫被认为与几个不同脑区中代谢型毒蕈碱受体异常有关，而离子型烟碱受体的突变已被报道可导致一种特定类型的癫痫——常染色体显性遗传性夜间额叶癫痫。在网络水平上，胆碱能投射神经元及其与其他神经元的相互作用可能调节癫痫的发展，尤其是从基底前脑到海马体的胆碱能回路，而胆碱能局部中间神经元尚未被报道与癫痫有关。随着光遗传学和其他技术的发展，剖析和调节胆碱能相关癫痫回路已成为癫痫研究的热点。
