Recording EEG in Freely Moving Neonatal Rats Using a Novel Method

The overall goal of this method is to record EEGs from freely moving neonatal rat pups, using a novel electrode set up that is stable for a week or longer. This method will have answered key questions in the field of neuroscience and will be beneficial in the study of a neonatal epilepsy. By using this technique, one can record high quality and stable EEG signals for longer timeframes.

Which will help in the diagnosis of various neuro-pathological disorders. Generally, individuals new to this method will struggle because neonatal rat at p8 to p15 are very difficult to handle and require great care. The electrode requires a pronged contact to function as the signal interface with the communication devices.

A computer pin lo sai fills this role. Carefully separate the male and female pins from a computer pin lo sai using pliers. Then, connect the male and female pins together to form an electrode, and secure the connection with cyanoacrylate.

Make several such electrodes. Once the bonds have hardened, put the electrodes into a beaker filled with distilled water for ten minutes. Then, place them into an ultrasonic cleaner to clean the electrodes.

Then, transfer the beaker to an oven set to 45 degrees Celsius, and heat them for half an hour. Lastly, sterilize the electrodes with a 30-minute UV exposure. In a bio-safety hood, first set up the sterilized surgical tools, and a sterilized stereotaxic apparatus for the surgery.

Then, anesthetize the neonatal rat pup using two point five percent isoflurane. When the pup is deeply anesthetized, reduce the isoflurane to one percent. Prior to proceeding, use a toe pinch to ensure that the mouse is sufficiently anesthetized.

Next, fix the head of the pup in the stereotaxic apparatus. Position the ear bars in the ear canals and gently tighten the bars. Be careful:the neonatal skull is very soft.

Now, make a fifteen-millimeter midline incision into the skull. Then, with forceps, gently pull apart the scalp to widen the incision. To keep the incision open, use a piece of saline-soaked cotton.

Now, locate the bregma and lambda, and mark them with a pencil. The following electrode implantation steps are critical and must be executed precisely. First, using a 26-gauge needle, make a burr hole into the prefrontal cortex, two millimeters anterior to the bregma and within zero point five millimeters of the midline.

Next, make a burr hole into the hippocampus at one point eight millimeters posterior to the bregma and zero point five millimeters lateral of the midline. The needle should not penetrate more than two millimeters below the cortical surface to minimize brain damage. Now, using forceps, insert the reference electrode in the cortex hole, and insert the recording electrodes into the hippocampus hole.

Then, apply erythromycin ointment around the electrodes, and fix the electrodes in place with cyanoacrylate. While the glue bonds, prepare dental cement at a gluey and viscous consistency. The viscosity of the dental cement is critical.

If the dental cement is too thin, it may result in building up an undesired insulating layer under the electrode. If the cement is too dense, the electrodes will be more easily detached because of the excess mass. Before applying the cement, thoroughly dry the skull and the electrodes.

Then, secure the electrodes to the skull with dental cement. Following this, apply some picric acid onto the electrodes to add another layer of protection to them. Now, remove the animal from the stereotaxic frame, and inject 300 microliters of ten percent glucose solution subcutaneously.

Then, transfer the animal to a heated blanket to keep it at 37 degrees Celsius until it is ambulatory. Once ambulatory, administer buprenorphine to mediate post-surgical pain, and transfer the pup to its home cage with its dam. Before using the implant, wait at least two days for the pup to recover.

After the recovery period, house the pup alone to make recordings for about ten minutes so that the pup may become familiar with the environment. Connect the electrodes to an amplifier, and connect the amplifier to an AD converter attached to a computer. Be careful not to tangle these connections.

Next, on the data acquisition unit, select a sampling rate of at least 10, 000 hertz for recording, and check for proper data transmission. Collect a baseline recording. After taking a baseline recording, inject the pup intraperitoneally with kainic acid to induce epileptic seizures.

Fifteen minutes after the injection, observe and record the epileptic discharges. Save the digitized data, and analyze it using signal-processing software. Reveal the power level of different frequency components in the neonatal EEGs using power spectrum analysis.

Calculate the power from one-minute timeframes by finding root mean square amplitude from one to one hundred hertz, which is the EEG band. Ten minutes after the kainic acid injection, recurrent interictal and ictal EEG discharge patterns were recorded. The most common seizures recorded were the tonic clonic type.

The ictal tonic duration lasted about fifteen seconds. It was also observed that tonic discharges were followed by clonic bursts. After watching this video, you should have a good understanding of how to implant electrodes and obtain high-quality EEG recordings from p8 to p15 neonatal rat pups.

Once mustered, the cervical implantation can be done in less than ten minutes depending on the complexity of the surgery.