Evolution of Epileptiform Activity in Zebrafish by Statistical-Based Integration of Electrophysiology and 2-Photon Ca(2+) Imaging

The study of sources and spatiotemporal evolution of ictal bursts is critical for the mechanistic understanding of epilepsy and for the validation of anti-epileptic drugs. Zebrafish is a powerful vertebrate model representing an excellent compromise between system complexity and experimental accessibility. We performed the quantitative evaluation of the spatial recruitment of neuronal populations during physiological and pathological activity by combining local field potential (LFP) recordings with simultaneous 2-photon Ca(2+) imaging. We developed a method to extract and quantify electrophysiological transients coupled with Ca(2+) events and we applied this tool to analyze two different epilepsy models and to assess the efficacy of the anti-epileptic drug valproate. Finally, by cross correlating the imaging data with the LFP, we demonstrated that the cerebellum is the main source of epileptiform transients. We have also shown that each transient was preceded by the activation of a sparse subset of neurons mostly located in the optic tectum.