title: Can the rat detect hypoxia in inspired air?
abstract: Rats reacted in immediate escape response to encounters with severe hypoxia. This led to a test of the hypothesis that mammals which live in closed spaces (burrows) should have a hypoxic alarm mechanism. A possible detection of hypoxia was studied. Rats were trained to thrust their heads into a compartment flushed by a gas mixture of high or low O2 (balance N2), and after a timed interval, to enter the compartment (on high O2) for a reward or to withdraw (on low O2) to avoid a punishment. Exposure times for the gas mixtures were 5, 3 or 1 sec. The initial conditions for high and low O2 mixtures were 30% and 3% for one series, and 21% and 3% for two other series. Successful discrimination between low and high O2 mixtures led to a stepwise reduction of the concentration difference between them. The rat could detect 21% as different from 30%, 13-17% as different from 21%, and 7-15% as different from 3%. From the short time needed for the learned response (1-3 sec), it is suggested that the rat's olfactory system or airway O2 receptors may be involved in the detection of oxygen.
authors.affiliation: Israel Naval Hyperbaric Institute, Haifa.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Arieli
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004924:Escape Reaction / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology*; D000860:Hypoxia / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D010100:Oxygen / Q000032:analysis / Q000494:pharmacology; D051381:Rats / Q000502:physiology*; D012119:Respiration / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D010100:Oxygen