Chaos Analysis of Compound Action Potentials Evoked in Sural Nerves from Rats Reared without Littermates

Abstract

Recently it has been an increased interest on individual differences among siblings. Thereby a variety of pre- and postnatal factors are considered as a source of individual variability in mammals, which is often considered as unwanted noise. In biomedical research, it has been considered prenatal factors such as intrauterine environment, neighbor fetus interaction and nutrition status of the mother as contributors of long-term alterations (fetal programming) [3]. Nowadays, sibling interaction has been considered as a potential contributor of behavioral and physiological phenotypes. For example, pups reared without littermates have a delay in the development of motor skills compared with normal reared litter [4]. Early sibling deprivation is also associated with the development of anxiolytic and addictive behaviors in adult rats. Thus the aim of this study was to evaluate by means of a chaos methodology implemented in this study, the effect of rearing with and without littermates on the CAP evoked in the sural nerve of the rat.