Some computational aspects of the kindling model for neuropsychiatric disorders

Kindling and episode sensitization are two related mechanisms underlying th e autonomous progression of seizure and mood disorders, respectively. The i ssue is that disease events are initially elicited by external triggers, bu t, following a sufficient number of trigger stimuli, disease events occur s pontaneously. Complex biological changes are associated with kindling and e pisode sensitization but the principal functional mechanism is positive fee dback between a respective disease system and its transient output event. H ere we use a simple nonlinear model and study the effects of positive feedb ack between the model's activity and an activity-dependent dynamic sensitiz ation variable. Our simulations demonstrate that the, at first glance, simp le mechanism leads to complex behaviors including chaotic states with balan ced feedback dynamics. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.