Behavioral Alterations in Temporolimbic Epilepsy

Partial seizure-like symptoms in borderline personality disorder

The clinical presentation of borderline personality disorder (BPD) bears a striking resemblance to the behavioral alterations associated with temporal lobe epilepsy. Using the Limbic System Checklist-33, we found that BPD subjects reported more symptoms associated with partial seizures than did control subjects. BPD patients also exhibited deficits on immediate and delayed recall of the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure and produced distorted drawings of the Rey Figure. Their degree of impairment correlated with their report of temporolimbic symptoms. Results are consistent with the proposal that temporolimbic dysfunction underlies the behavioral dyscontrol and affective dysregulation present in BPD.

Long-term kindling and interictal emotionality in rats: effect of stimulation site

Long-term amygdala kindling in rats produces increases in emotionality (Kalynchuk et al., Biol. Psychiatry, 41 (1997) 438-451). The present experiment was conducted to investigate whether this hyperemotionality is specific to amygdala kindling or whether it can be produced by kindling other structures. Rats received 99 convulsive or sham stimulations of either the amygdala, the hippocampus, or the caudate nucleus. One day after the stimulation phase, each rat's open-field activity and resistance to capture were assessed; the following day, each rat was tested on an elevated plus maze. The site of stimulation had a significant effect on the results of each of these tests. The amygdala-kindled and hippocampal-kindled rats explored less in the open field, were more resistant to capture from the open field, and engaged in a greater percentage of open-arm activity in the elevated plus maze than did the caudate-kindled rats or the sham-stimulated controls. The caudate-kindled rats were more active in the open field than their sham-stimulated controls, but they did not significantly differ from them in terms of the other measures. These results suggest that kindling-induced emotionality is produced by limbic kindling but not nonlimbic kindling.