The<unk>  or Genetic Absence Epilepsy Rat from Strasbourg is a recognized animal model of absence epilepsy, a typical childhood form of epilepsy characterized by recurrent loss of contact and concomitant pattern on the electroencephalogram called "spike-and-wave" discharges. It was first characterized in Strasbourg in the 1980s and since then has been used by different international research groups to understand the mechanisms underlying absence seizures and their ontogeny, using different techniques. History== In the 1980s the research group of Marguerite Vergnes at Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM) in Strasbourg (France) reported the spontaneous occurrence of spike-and-wave discharges (SWD) evocative of absence seizures in Wistar rats during cortical electroencephalographic (EE) recordings. These seizures were recorded on both sides of the brain, lasted about 20 sec and occurred when the animals were quiet. Importantly, SWD were always associated with a typical "arrest" of the rats' behavior with twitching of the vibrissae. In addition, drugs used in the clinic to stop absence seizures (ethosuccimide, valproate) suppressed SWDs in these rats, whereas those that aggravate these seizures in patients (carbamazepine, phenytoine), increased rats' seizures. Development of two strains== These initial observations led to the development of two breeding colonies: (i) a fully inbred strain of rats, with 100% of animals displaying the EEG and behavioral characteristics of absence seizures, derived from an outbred Wistar colony and called the Genetic Absence Epilepsy Rats from Strasbourg<unk>  (ii) a strain of non epileptic control animals selected from the same initial breeding colony of Wistar rats and called the NEC. Since then, the<unk>  has been recognized as a very predictive model for absence epilepsy, along with the WAG/Rij rat model. The colony, initially developed in Strasbourg (France), is maintained at the University of Grenoble Alpes (France) under Inserm licence.
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MORHAN
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