Receive a weekly summary and discussion of the top papers of the week by leading researchers in the field.

In Cell reports ; h5-index 119.0

Temporal lobe epilepsy is the fourth most common neurological disorder, with about 40% of patients not responding to pharmacological treatment. Increased cellular loss is linked to disease severity and pathological phenotypes such as heightened seizure propensity. While the hippocampus is the target of therapeutic interventions, the impact of the disease at the cellular level remains unclear. Here, we show that hippocampal granule cells change with disease progression as measured in living, resected hippocampal tissue excised from patients with epilepsy. We show that granule cells increase excitability and shorten response latency while also enlarging in cellular volume and spine density. Single-nucleus RNA sequencing combined with simulations ascribes the changes to three conductances: BK, Cav2.2, and Kir2.1. In a network model, we show that these changes related to disease progression bring the circuit into a more excitable state, while reversing them produces a less excitable, "early-disease-like" state.

Buchin Anatoly, de Frates Rebecca, Nandi Anirban, Mann Rusty, Chong Peter, Ng Lindsay, Miller Jeremy, Hodge Rebecca, Kalmbach Brian, Bose Soumita, Rutishauser Ueli, McConoughey Stephen, Lein Ed, Berg Jim, Sorensen Staci, Gwinn Ryder, Koch Christof, Ting Jonathan, Anastassiou Costas A

2022-Dec-27

CP: Neuroscience, biophysics, classifiers, epilepsy, granule cells, hippocampus, human neurons, machine learning, modeling, morphology, patch-clamp, simulation, single-cell, snRNA-seq