ABSTRACT
Audiogenic seizures have captured the imagination of scores of investigators for the past 60 years. Donaldson’s 1924 description of sound-produced convulsions in rats has led to over a thousand articles on this topic, describing experiments conducted throughout the globe. Immediately following the onset of a loud sound, the susceptible animal typically ceases ongoing behaviors. It may freeze, display emotional reactions, or begin to walk or jump. Susceptibility to both audiogenic and electroconvulsive seizures appears to develop at the same rate in the mouse. In the rat, direct electrical stimulation of subcortical auditory structures, especially the inferior colliculus, will produce a seizure. Some of the earlier studies doubted the essential nature of sound in precipitating what is now termed the audiogenic seizure; Morgan and Morgan challenged the view that this behavior was a “neurotic response to conflict.” Aluminum hydroxide gel applied to the cerebral cortex can produce susceptibility to audiogenic seizures in rats.
