Environmental risk factors such as stressful experiences have long been recognized to affect seizure susceptibility, but little attention has been paid to the potential effects of improving housing conditions. In this study, we investigated the influence of an enriched environment on epileptogenesis. Epileptic susceptibility was assessed in animals housed in an enriched environment either before and during (group I) or only during (group II) a kindling procedure and in animals placed in isolated conditions (group III). The kindling paradigm provides a reliable assessment of the capacity to develop seizures following repeated daily low-frequency electrical stimulations. As both enriched environment and seizures are known to interfere with hippocampal neurogenesis, the number of newly generated dentate cells was assessed before and after the kindling procedure to investigate in more detail the relationship between epileptogenesis and neurogenesis. We found that susceptibility to developing epilepsy differed in animals housed in complex enriched environments and in those housed in isolated conditions. Kindling epileptogenesis occurred significantly later in animals housed in enriched conditions throughout the procedure (group I) than in animals from groups II and III. We also demonstrated that cells generated during kindling survived for at least 42 days and that these cells were more numerous on both sides of the brain following environmental enrichment than in rats housed in isolated conditions. As similar values were obtained regardless of the duration of the period of enrichment, these cellular changes may not play a major role in delaying kindling development. We suggest that the increase response in neurogenesis following seizures may be an adaptative rather an epileptogenic response.
Copyright 2002 Elsevier Science B.V.