Effects of Electrical Stimulation of the Oral Reticular Nucleus of the Pons on the Background of Different States in the Sleep–Waking Cycle in Krushinskii–Molodkina Rats

摘要

The effects of electrical stimulation of the oral reticular nucleus of the pons on behavior and brain activity in different states of the sleep–waking cycle were studied in Krushinskii–Molodkina rats, which have an inherited predisposition to audiogenic convulsions. Electrical stimulation of this structure at a frequency of 7 Hz on the background of deep slow-wave sleep induced a transition from slow- to fast-wave sleep. Analogous stimulation during fast-wave sleep had no effect on the electrogram patterns or spectra of the hippocampus or the visual, auditory, or somatosensory areas of the cortex and did not interrupt this state, though it did induce an almost twofold increase in the duration of its individual episodes. Electrical stimulation of the nucleus at 7 Hz during waking or shallow slow-wave sleep had no effect on behavior or electrogram patterns or spectral characteristics in the study structures and did not induce transition from one stage of the cycle to another. The results obtained here show that the state of the animals in the sleep–waking cycle is an important variable on which the effects of electrical stimulation of the oral reticular nucleus of the pons depend.