Fig. 1.

Chronic early-life stress (CES) enhances excitability in amygdala, manifest as the presence of epileptiform spike series. A and B are sample EEGs from two individual rats recorded around two weeks each. Rats were implanted with bipolar electrodes in the right amygdala and with two cortical electrodes, one each over right and left frontoparietal cortices, as described in the methods. The montage used for these animals consisted of: Channel 1: from within the right amygdala (bipolar); Channel 2: Activity between the two cortical electrodes. These epileptiform discharges occurred throughout the 16 and 17 day recordings in the two rats, and their typical contour is shown in an expanded time-scale (of the boxed segments) in A1, B1. Such spike-trains were never observed in the 20 video-EEG recorded control rats.