Peripheral vasoconstriction in the rat in response to sound. I. Dependence on stimulus duration.
Vasoconstriction in response to sound has been studied in the non-anaesthetized rat. Arterial pulsations in the tail were recorded by a non-invasive technique. Broad-band noise bursts at 80 dB SPL with durations from 1 ms to several hours were presented in a free field in a sound-isolated box. The results show that acoustic energy is integrated with a time constant of about 0.1 s. The responses during continuous stimulation habituated slowly and the time to halfway normalization of arterial pulsation was more than 15 min.
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000222:Adaptation, Physiological; D000818:Animals; D001158:Arteries / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D009622:Noise; D051381:Rats; D013623:Tail / Q000098:blood supply; D013997:Time Factors; D014661:Vasoconstriction