Pacing the canine stomach with electric stimulation.

KELLY, KEITH A. AND RICHARD C. LA FORCE. Pacing the canine stomach with electric stimulation. Am. J. Physiol. 222(3) : 588-594. 1972.-Certain aspects of gastric electric activity in six conscious dogs were controlled by electric stimulation from encircling and point gastric electrodes. The natural gastric pacesetter potential (PP) arose in the orad corpus at a mean frequency of 5.0 & 0.1 cycles/min and was propagated aborad. Rectangular electric pulses given 5 times/min generated PP at the cathode of each type of electrode, except in the fundus, and simultaneously suppressed the natural PP. The PP propagating aborad had the same configuration and time of propagation as the natural PP; that propagating orad had a different configuration but the same time. The frequency of the generated PP could be increased to 8.0 or decreased to 4.2 cycles/min by changing the frequency of the stimulus. When electric stimulation was stopped, the natural PP reappeared after one to four natural periods. Gastric instillation of 500 ml of water at 37 C reduced the mean frequency of the PP from 4.9 to 4.1 cycles/min within 5 min, but did not affect the frequency of response to stimulation at 5.1 pulses/min.