Behavioral and motor deficits following traumatic brain injury: implications for post-traumatic epilepsy.

Post-traumatic epilepsy (PTE) is a severe complication of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Patients with PTE often experience comorbid neurobehavioral deficits, which further reduce the quality of life and impede the recovery of patients. This review examines behavioral and motor deficits associated with PTE across clinical and preclinical studies, with an emphasis on the need to identify PTE-specific phenotypes that may serve as biomarkers of disease development and progression, as well as distinguish PTE from other forms of epilepsy. Despite growing evidence of post-TBI behavioral and motor abnormalities, their relationship with PTE remains unclear, particularly in preclinical models where direct comparisons are limited between animals that do and do not develop PTE. We further evaluate the application of artificial intelligence (AI) for characterizing these phenotypes throughout post-traumatic epileptogenesis, highlighting its potential to provide automated, objective, and sensitive measures of functional outcomes.