Targeting the mouse ventral hippocampus in the intrahippocampal kainic acid model of temporal lobe epilepsy

Here we describe a novel mouse model of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) that moves the site of kainate injection from the rodent dorsal hippocampus (corresponding to the human posterior hippocampus) to the ventral hippocampus (corresponding to the human anterior hippocampus). We compare the phenotypes of this new model—with respect to seizures, cognitive impairment, affective deficits, and histopathology—to the standard dorsal intrahippocampal kainate model. Our results demonstrate that histopathological measures of granule cell dispersion and mossy fiber sprouting maximize near the site of kainate injection. Somewhat surprisingly, both the dorsal and ventral models exhibit similar spatial memory impairments in addition to similar electrographic and behavioral seizure burdens. In contrast, we find a more pronounced affective (anhedonic) phenotype specifically in the ventral model. These results demonstrate that the ventral intrahippocampal kainic acid model recapitulates critical pathologies of the dorsal model while providing a means to further study affective phenotypes such as depression in TLE.