Figure 7.

VPA-reared tadpoles exhibit increased seizure susceptibility and decreased acoustic startle habituation. A, A typical C-shaped bend exhibited by tadpoles during pharmacologically induced seizures. B, A sample trace of swimming speed evolution during a seizure protocol; onset of regular seizures is marked with an arrow. C, Comparison of seizures frequency during the first 5 min of testing for control (blue) and VPA-reared (red) tadpoles. All data, medians, and 20–80% quantiles are shown. D, Speed of acoustic startle responses in the acoustic habituation protocol; the plot shows all data points and averages across all tested animals in each group. Brackets on the top illustrate segments of data that were averaged and compared for each tadpole to produce estimations of rapid, short-term, and long-term habituation. E, Comparison of short-term habituation amount, defined as the ratio of average startle response amplitudes at different stages of habituation protocol (see Results), for control (blue) and VPA-reared (red) tadpoles. F, Comparison of long-term habituation amount for control and VPA-reared tadpoles. *p < 0.05.