[Characteristics of vestibular nystagmus in rats].

As a result of experiments on Wistar, Wistar-SPF and mongrel rats, the duration, number of beats and frequency of nystagmus in response to progressively increasing acceleration of 10, 20, 30 and 40 deg/sec2 for 3 sec at each step were determined. These parameters were found to increase with a rise in acceleration, the rate of increase being gradually slowed down (the slope of the curves decreased). The number of beats and the duration of the nystagmus in the Wistar and mongrel rats were identical and significantly higher (P less than 0.01) than those in the Wistar-SPF rats. There was no difference in the nystagmic frequency. It was demonstrated that the system of animal restraint produced a noticeable effect on the quantitative characteristics of the nystagmus, e. g. duration and number of beats. The paper describes a system of gentle restraint of rats.