Kindling and carbamazepine in affective illness.

Kindling represents a process in which increasing behavioral and convulsive responses occur to repetition of the same stimulus over time. Increased behavioral response can also occur to repetition of the same dose of psychomotor stimulant or dopamine agonist, i.e., behavioral sensitization. These two models, which may have important implications for the progressive development of psychopathology in a variety of neuropsychiatric syndromes, are reviewed. Carbamazepine, a drug of choice in treatment of temporal lobe and limbic seizures and effective in inhibiting kindling, has been used as a treatment of primary and secondary affective illness. The efficacy of carbamazepine in affective illness and its clinical and theoretical implications are discussed.