What Do Models Model? What Needs to Be Modeled?

The main purpose of creating or identifying animal models for human seizures and epilepsies, as well as their associated pathologies and comorbidities, is to utilize them to elucidate the mechanisms underlying pathogenesis, and develop treatments that will likely translate into effective therapies. It is certainly not expected that models will be perfect, and bear identical features to human syndromes or diseases.It is therefore important to recognize the advantages and limitations of each animal model, and to recognize which human seizures/epilepsies/pathologies each model is most relevant to. It is also important to develop strategies to improve our ability to translate such animal model findings into the clinical arena, such as the development of biomarkers.In this chapter, we attempt to reclassify the animal models discussed in this book as models of seizures, epilepsy syndromes and etiology relevant models of epilepsies.