Neurobiological Aspects of Post-traumatic Epilepsy: Lessons from Animal Models

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading type of epilepsy with significant repercussions for the quality of life of patients, due to the associated injury, consequent epilepsy and cognitive, behavioral or neuropsychiatric sequelae. There have been intense efforts to generate better strategies and methods to treat these patients better. This chapter reviews the advances in animal models of posttraumatic epilepsy (PTE), focusing on rodents, presenting an update on models, their phenotype, findings on neurobiology of TBI and PTE and future directions. The value of models, like the fluid percussion injury, controlled cortical impact, blast, penetrating TBI, weight drop TBI, in this process in being discussed as well as efforts to accelerate progress in the field through the use of collaborative research and infrastructure.