Heart rate conditioning of anosmic rats

TY - JOUR

T1 - Heart rate conditioning of anosmic rats

AU - Phillips, David S.

AU - Martin, Glen K.

N1 - Funding Information: Sixty male Sprague-Dawley rats (285-400 g) supplied by Simonsen Labs served. Twenty animals were randomly assigned to a control group, twenty to a nerve section group and twenty to a lesion group. Animals in the lesion group were anesthetized with sodium pentobarbital administered intraperitoneally. Each animal was placed in a headholder so that the top of the skull was horizontal, the scalp was retracted and the skull over the olfactory bulbs was removed. The olfactory bulbs were severed from the rest of the brain with a scalpel and the anterior portion aspirated. The transection was made at the anterior end of the frontal lobes, perpendicular to the horizontal plane. This transection was made as close as possible to the frontal lobes but care was taken not to harm the frontal poles. Animals in the nerve section group were anesthetized, placed in the headholder, and had the skull over the olfactory bulbs removed. Rather than removing the olfactory bulbs, however, the bulbs were elevated slightly and the afferent fibers from the mucosa severed. Ten days after surgery, animals were individually tested. Each animal was restrained in an E & M Instrument Company rat holder. This holder fitted snugly around the rat and removable inserts at either end were positioned to hold the animal securely. The holder containing the animal was placed inside a sound-shielded Industrial Acoustics chamber equipped with a fresh air supply, a 5 in. audiospeaker and an 8 in. audiospeaker. White noise, measuring 70 db sound pressure level (re 0.0002 dyne/ cm2-), was provided by a Grason-Stadler noise generator and presented continuously through the 5 in. speaker to mask extraneous sounds. Heart rate was measured by means of an automated on-line system \[2\]. EKG was recorded from 20-gauge hypodermic needles inserted under the skin on each side of the animal's thoracic cavity and written out on a Grass polygraph. A sensitive lever microswitch was attached to the polygraph's writer unit and positioned to operate when the EKG pen was deflected by the R wave component of the QRS complex. Closure of this switch triggered a pulse shaper whose output went to a Hewlett-Packard electronic counter. At the start of a trial a start-count command signal was automatically given to the court er which then accumulated pulses from the pulse shaper until a stop-count command signal was automatically given to the counter which then accumulated pulses from the pulse shaper until 1The research was supported in part by National Science Foundation grants GB-11594 and GB-28222, by a National Heart Institute project grant HE-06-336-10 and by a National Institute of General Sciences predoctoral fellowship GM01495.

PY - 1972/1

Y1 - 1972/1

KW - Anosmia

KW - Conditioning

KW - Heart rate

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U2 - 10.1016/0031-9384(72)90126-6

DO - 10.1016/0031-9384(72)90126-6

M3 - Article

SN - 0031-9384

VL - 8

SP - 33

EP - 36

JO - Physiology and Behavior

JF - Physiology and Behavior

IS - 1

ER -