A Novel Animal Model for Investigating the Neural Basis of Focal Dystonia
Abstract
The overall goal of the project was to develop an animal model of the focal dystonia benign essential blepharospasm. Consistent with the widely held view that dystonia results from an interaction between a predisposing condition and an environmental trigger, we proposed to use 7 Hz deep brain stimulation of the basal ganglia as the predisposing condition and dry eye as the environmental trigger. We hypothesized that the 7 Hz deep brain stimulation would exaggerate the blink adaptations to dry eye into spasms of lid closure characteristic of benign essential blepharospasm (BEB). During this grant, we demonstrated that combining 7 Hz deep brain stimulation with dry eye produced spasms of eyelid closure characteristic of BEB. We also determined that dry eye enhanced the predisposing condition in female, but not male rats. This last result may account for the preponderance of human females exhibiting BEB. Our four publications report these results.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 2020
- Accession Number
- AD1117639
Entities
People
- Leslie Evinger