The dosing paradigm is presented in Fig. 1. Mice were dosed once per day for 14 days with PB (2 mg/kg/day, s.c.) and DEET (30 mg/kg/day, s.c). On days 8–15, mice received CORT in the drinking water (200 mg/L in 1.2% ethanol, EtOH). This CORT regimen is known to be immunosuppressive as evidenced by decreased thymus weight (e.g., see O'Callaghan et al. 1991); thymus and spleen weights were confirmed to be decreased (> 20%) in all CORT (including PB/DEET+CORT) groups in this study. Control groups received saline injections and the 1.2% EtOH/water vehicle in the same paradigm and were controlled for the potential of handling stress. Finally, on day 15 mice were treated with a single injection of either DFP (4 mg/kg, i.p.) or saline (0.9%) (Fig. 1a). DFP causes behavioral seizures that abate over hours; DFP‐induced seizure activity was not affected by PB/DEET pre‐treatments and PB/DEET alone did not cause seizures. To compare the effects of handling, there was a non‐handled control group which did not receive 14 days of saline injections. However, there were no significant effects of handling for our outcome measures; therefore, the non‐handled group was not included in our final data analyses. For the MINO experiment, mice were dosed with MINO (100 mg/kg, s.c.) once per day for 15 days. On days 8–15 mice received CORT in the drinking water (200 mg/L in 1.2% EtOH). Control groups received saline injections and the 1.2% EtOH/water vehicle in the same paradigm. On day 15, mice were treated with a single injection of DFP (4 mg/kg, i.p.) or saline (0.9%) (Fig. 1b).