Kindling as a model for alcohol withdrawal syndromes.

Periodic brain stimulation, particularly in the limbic system, at stimulus intensities initially too low to produce any behavioural or EEG effects, progressively produces EEG changes, motor automatisms, and eventually convulsions, an effect called kindling. Data are presented and reviewed that suggest that the severity of alcohol withdrawal symptoms progressively increases over years of alcohol abuse in a stepwise fashion similar to the kindling process. The model is presented that the limbic system hyperirritability which accompanies each alcohol withdrawal serves over time to kindle increasingly widespread subcortical structures. These long-term changes in neuronal excitability might relate to the progression of alcohol withdrawal symptoms from tremor to seizures and delirium tremens, as well as the alcoholic personality changes between episodes of withdrawal.