Department of Pharmacology & Physiology, Department of Neuroscience, and Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience, Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington, DC.
J Neurosci Res. 2017 Dec;95(12):2345-2356. doi: 10.1002/jnr.24135. Epub 2017 Aug 9.
Epilepsy is the quintessential circuit disorder, with seizure activity propagating through anatomically constrained pathways. These pathways, necessary for normal sensory, motor, and cognitive function, are hijacked during seizures. Understanding the network architecture at the level of both local microcircuits and distributed macrocircuits may provide new therapeutic avenues for the treatment of epilepsy. Over the past decade, optogenetic and chemogenetic tools have enabled previously impossible levels of functional circuit mapping in neuroscience. In this review, examples of the application of optogenetics and chemogenetics to epilepsy are raised, the comparative strengths and weaknesses of these approaches are discussed for both preclinical and translational applications, and recent applications of these approaches in other areas of neuroscience are highlighted. These points are raised in an effort to highlight the potential of these methods to address additional unanswered questions in epilepsy.
癫痫是典型的电路紊乱疾病，其发作活动通过解剖学上受限的途径传播。这些途径对于正常的感觉、运动和认知功能是必要的，但在发作期间被劫持。了解局部微电路和分布式宏电路两个层面的网络架构可能为癫痫的治疗提供新的治疗途径。在过去的十年中，光遗传学和化学遗传学工具使神经科学以前所未有的水平进行功能电路映射成为可能。在这篇综述中，提出了光遗传学和化学遗传学在癫痫中的应用实例，讨论了这些方法在临床前和转化应用中的相对优缺点，并强调了这些方法在神经科学其他领域的最新应用。提出这些观点是为了强调这些方法有潜力解决癫痫中其他未解决的问题。
