title: Test-retest reliability of the rat N40 auditory evoked response: preliminary data.
abstract: The N40 auditory evoked potential (EP) in rats has been used to develop an animal model for the study of sensory gating mechanisms. In an examination of the test-retest reliability of sensory gating indices, derived from the rat N40 EP, six rats were tested four times daily for 5 consecutive days. A paired-click paradigm (S1-S2) was used, and both the S2/S1 amplitude ratio and the S1-S2 amplitude difference measures of sensory gating capacity were calculated. Based on the means of four daily trials, reliability coefficients were as follows; r = 0.69 for S1, and r = 0.66 for S2 amplitudes. A reliability coefficient of 0.59 was found for the S1-S2 difference measure, and one of 0.47 for the S2/S1 ratio measure. These results suggest that the N40 can be used to study sensory gating, but caution has to be exercised in interpreting the data particularly in a repeated measures design.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA. boutros.nashaatn@west-haven.va.gov
authors.forename: N N
authors.initials: NN
authors.lastname: Boutros
authors.forename: S W
authors.initials: SW
authors.lastname: Kwan
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D003265:Contingent Negative Variation / Q000502:physiology; D004569:Electroencephalography / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology*; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D015203:Reproducibility of Results