Minimally Invasive Motor Nerve Conduction Study of the Rat Sciatic and Tail Nerves

Human and veterinary scientific researchers widely use rats as experimental animals. The rat nerves conduction studies are used for investigations of neural tissue injury, neural regeneration, peripheral neuropathies etc. in experimental models. Nerve conduction studies on animals do not follow strict rules, as studies in humans. Various methods and lack of the single recognized technique of nerve conduction study on the animals often lead to difficulties in the interpretation and comparison of the results of similar studies. In the present study, we have described the minimally invasive motor nerve conduction study on the rat sciatic and tail nerves. Electrophysiological examination including nerve conduction velocity and compound muscle action potential amplitudes measurements were performed on six normal growing male adult Wistar Albino rats. The mean motor nerve conduction velocity of the sciatic nerves was 58.90±5.07 m/s and of the tail nerves was 40.23±2.39 m/s. The mean compound muscle action potential amplitudes of the sciatic and tail nerves were 17.91±6.75 mV and 1.89±0.49 mV, respectively. Similar results of previous in vitro and in vivo studies prove the objectivity and reliability of our nerve conduction technique by bipolar needle electrodes on the non-exposed nerves.