text: In the 1990s, paroxysmal depolarizing shift-type interictal epileptiform discharges has been suggested to be primarily dependent on autaptic activity for solitary excitatory hippocampal rat neurons grown in microculture.
  More recently, in human neocortical tissues of patients with intractable epilepsy, the GABAergic output autapses of fast-spiking (FS) neurons have been shown to have stronger asynchronous release (AR) compared to both non-epileptic tissue and other types of synapses involving FS neurons. The study found similar results using a rat model as well. An increase in residual Ca2+ concentration in addition to the action potential amplitude in FS neurons was suggested to cause this increase in AR of epileptic tissue. Anti-epileptic drugs could potentially target this AR of GABA that seems to rampantly occur at FS neuron autapses.