Abstract Septo-hippocampal pathway is crucial for physiological functions and is involved in epilepsy. Its clinical monitoring during epileptogenesis is complicated. We aim to evaluate tissue changes after lesioning the medial septum of normal rats and assess how the depletion of specific neuronal populations alters the animals’ behavior and susceptibility to establishing a pilocarpine-induced status epilepticus . A total of 64 young-adult male Sprague-Dawley rats were injected into the medial septum with vehicle or saporins (GAT1 or 192-IgG for GABAergic or cholinergic depletion, respectively; n=16 per group). Thirty-two animals were used for diffusion tensor imaging (DTI); they were scanned before surgery and 14 and 49 days post-injection. Fractional anisotropy and apparent diffusion coefficient were evaluated in the fimbria, dorsal hippocampus, ventral hippocampus, dorso-medial thalamus and amygdala. Between scans 2 and 3, animals were submitted to the elevated plus-maze, open-field test, rotarod test, Y-maze and water-maze. Timm, toluidine and Nissl staining were used to analyze tissue alterations. Twenty-four different animals received pilocarpine to evaluate the latency and severity of the status epilepticus two weeks after surgery. Eight animals were only used to evaluate the extent of neuronal damage inflicted on the medial septum one week after the molecular surgery. Progressive changes in DTI parameters in both the white and gray matter structures of the four evaluated groups were observed. Behaviorally, the GAT1-saporin injection impacted spatial memory formation, while 192-IgG-saporin triggered anxiety-like behaviors. Histologically, the GABAergic toxin also induced aberrant mossy fiber sprouting, tissue damage and neuronal death. Regarding the pilocarpine-induced status epilepticus , this agent provoked an increased mortality rate. Selective septo-hippocampal modulation impacts the integrity of limbic regions crucial for certain behavioral skills and could represent a precursor for epilepsy development. Significance statement The medial septum is believed to be involved in epilepsy. However, whether and how defects in the integrity of each neuronal subpopulation conforming this structure affect gray and white matter structures remains unclear. Here we examine whether the injection of vehicle or partially-selective saporins into medial septum of normal rats play a role in the integrity of specific brain regions relevant to memory formation, anxiety-like behaviors, and susceptibility to status epilepticus induction and survival. We find that lesioning the medial septum GABAergic or cholinergic neurons can represent a precursor for behavioral deficits or epilepsy development. Therefore, these results strongly support the idea that modulation of medial septum can be a potential target to improve cognition or reduce seizure frequency.

Selective medial septum lesions in healthy rats induce longitudinal changes in microstructure of limbic regions, behavioral alterations, and increased susceptibility to status epilepticus