Anterior and Middle Cerebral Arterial Ligations in Chronic Experimental Epilepsy in the Monkey

¹ From the Department of Bacteriology, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York City

The epileptic status of a group of 32 monkeys (Macaca mulatta) in which the anterior cerebral or a middle cerebral artery was ligated before, during or after the application of a disc with alumina cream to a cerebral principal sensorimotor area was compared with that of 15 control monkeys with similar ligations or similar disc applications. Ligation of either middle cerebral artery or of the single anterior cerebral artery usually did not greatly affect the clinical epileptic status. A mild delay in onset of clinical epilepsy and a slightly lesser degree of epileptic response than in the controls was sometimes noted and was most evident in those monkeys with ipsilateral middle cerebral ligations. Control monkeys in which only the anterior or a middle cerebral artery was ligated did not exhibit spontaneous convulsions nor could clinical seizures be evoked in them by vigorous prodding for 1 minute or by the intramuscular injection of our standard activating dose of Metrazol (16–24 mg/kg).