Sex and strain differences of acoustic startle reaction development in adolescent albino Wistar and hooded rats

• Authors: J. Blaszczyk , K. Tajchert
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Acoustic startle responses (ASR) were studied in 12 young Wistar albino and in 15 hooded rats of both genders. The six week old animals were first exposed to a 6.9 kHz tone pair of 2 ms pulses of 120 db intensity with the inter-stimulus interval (ISI) between 2 and 11 ms. ASR amplitudes and latencies as a function of the ISI, animal strain and gender were recorded and analyzed for ten consecutive weeks. No differences in the ASR amplitude between Wistar and hooded rats were found. ASR amplitude increased during the experimental period and followed body weight increase. Signiflcant differences were also observed between male and female rats in their startle responses to acoustic stimuli. Generally, male subjects responded with a greater ASR amplitude than females, and the changes may be attributed to the difference in neuromuscular development between genders. This experiment sets a background for further developmental studies

Keywords

EN

ACOUSTIC STARTLE; RAT

Discipline

• EXPERIMENTAL_BIOLOGY_&_MEDICINE: EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY & MEDICINE

• Publisher: Marceli Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, Polish Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Acta Neurobiologiae Experimentalis
• Year: 1996
• Volume: 56
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 919-925

Contributors

author

J. Blaszczyk

author

K. Tajchert

• Document Type: article
• Publication order reference: J.Blaszczyk, Dept. of Neurophysiology, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, 3 Pasteur St., 02-093 Warsaw, Poland