Kindling, Neurotrophins and Axon-Guidance Factors

Graham Goddard1 initially introduced kindling as a model for memory. Although most frequently utilized as an epilepsy model, particularly for temporal lobe epilepsy, kindling is occasionally used as a model for drug-induced plasticity, slowly developing neuropathologies other than epilepsy, and a variety of structural reorganizations of brain circuitry.2,3 Since our interest in the kindling phenomenon (and other models of epilepsy) is largely driven by our interest in neural plasticity, we have chosen to focus on kindling-induced neuronal reorganization. These kindling-induced effects may not have much relevance for epilepsy, but they are themselves interesting and potentially important phenomena and provide an excellent model for the study of mechanisms of activity-dependent neural growth.