Comparison of cerebellar Purkinje cell simple spike discharges in adult rats after undernutrition during the suckling period and nutritionally normal rats.
The spontaneous activity of cerebellar Purkinje cells was compared in 100- to 130-day-old rats undernourished during the suckling period (i.e. 0-21 days) and subsequently nutritionally rehabilitated (PU rats), with that in rats of the same strain and of similar age fed normally (age controls), and in normally fed rats of the same strain but approximately one month younger (weight controls). Simple spike activity of single cells was recorded with extracellular microelectrodes in pentothal-anaesthetized animals. The discharge patterns were assessed by on-line computer analysis of the interspike interval distributions with subsequent transformation of the data to enable the results to be evaluated by an analysis of variance. In addition, the distribution of the mean interval, the percentage of intervals less than 30 ms, the percentage of intervals greater than or equal to 150 ms, and the time spent in intervals greater than 150 ms, were compared for the PU rats and pooled controls by a nonparametric statistical test on the untransformed data. None of the results indicated that there were any significant differences between the simple spike activity of Purkinje cells from age- and weight- control rats nor between that in PU rats and the control groups. These results are discussed in relation to the previously reported deficits of granule cells in the cerebella of PU rats.
D000200:Action Potentials; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000828:Animal Population Groups / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D000833:Animals, Suckling / Q000502:physiology*; D001835:Body Weight; D002531:Cerebellum / Q000166:cytology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D009748:Nutrition Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology*; D011689:Purkinje Cells / Q000502:physiology*; D051381:Rats; D012016:Reference Values