Chronic Setup System for Continuous Monitoring of Epileptic Rats

This work presents a setup for chronic monitoring of spontaneous epileptic seizures in rats under kainic acid. The system allows to record the vagus nerve electroneurogram at 40 kS/s and the electroencephalogram at 250 S/s using an USB-6212 multifunction I/O-device. The system includes a video channel (20 fps) controlled by a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B. A slipring allows the rat to move freely. Quick cage cleaning is possible through a movable base. The chronic setup was tested on a Wistar rat after status epilepticus induction, using kainic acid. The system appears to be robust and reliable enough to record status epilepticus, making it suitable for more extended experiments in epileptic rats.