Does Environmental Enrichment Thwart Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and Co-morbidities in Aged Subjects?

Epilepsy is widely prevalent in the elderly populations. Besides unpredictable seizure attacks, co-morbidities like cognitive impairments, anxiety, depression and disturbed social behavior are severe in elderly subjects inflicted with epilepsy. Though anti-epileptic drugs (AED) are the most common means of treating TLE, undesirable side effects associated with them limit their usage. Thus, there is a pressing need to develop alternative non-invasive therapeutic strategies to treat elderly individuals with TLE. Environmental enrichment (EE) has been shown to be beneficial in immature and young epileptic rats. However, knowledge regarding the effects of EE in aged epileptic subjects has not garnered much attention. As aging is one of the predominant risk factor involved in seizure development, a non-invasive therapeutic alternative like EE for treating elderly patients with TLE will be extremely beneficial. The proposed hypotheses suggest possible non-invasive therapeutic approaches to mitigate hippocampal abnormalities, epileptogenesis and co-morbidities in aged subjects with TLE. This kind of study would shed light on the cellular and molecular basis underlying anti-epileptic and cognition enhancing effects of enriched rehabilitation for treating drug resistant TLE in young as well as aged subjects.