The practice of Clinical Physiology requires some basic physiological facts that can be translated into application. Maintaining a continuous development of Clinical Physiology would require regular experimentation on basic issues involving animals. With reference to the value of animal research an important statement has been published by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) (1) – “It mus...

Many of the major advances in our understanding of how functional brain imaging signals relate to neuronal activity over the previous two decades have arisen from physiological research studies involving experimental animal models. This approach has been successful partly because it provides opportunities to measure both the hemodynamic changes that underpin many human functional brain imaging ...

The authors discuss the impact of regulatory burden on the research enterprise, with emphasis on animal care and use programs. They identify three sources of regulatory burden: specific requirements in law and regulation, interpretive requirements or "guidance" by regulatory agencies, and self-imposed regulatory burden resulting from institutional interpretations. Attempting to minimize the ris...

Before starting a new animal experiment, thorough analysis of previously performed experiments is essential from a scientific as well as from an ethical point of view. The method that is most suitable to carry out such a thorough analysis of the literature is a systematic review (SR). An essential first step in an SR is to search and find all potentially relevant studies. It is important to inc...

BACKGROUND Animal experimentation has a long tradition in diabetes research and has provided invaluable benefits with regard to insulin discovery and treatment assessment. METHODS The review focuses on chemical-induced diabetes in rats and surveys the protocols of diabetes induction, diabetes diagnosis, and glucose tolerance evaluation in a selection of recent research. RESULTS This brief r...

Housing systems for captive animals have often been designed on the basis of economic and ergonomic considerations, such as equipment, costs, space, workload, ability to observe the animals and to maintain a certain degree of hygiene, with little or no consideration for animal welfare. Environmental refinement can be defined as any modification in the environment of captive animals that seeks t...

This chapter briefly explores whether there are distinct characteristics in the field of Behavioral Neuroscience that demand specific ethical reflection. We argue that although the ethical issues in animal-based Behavioral Neuroscience are not necessarily distinct from those in other research disciplines using animal experimentation, this field of endeavor makes a number of specific, ethically ...

Animal research has provided important information about many aspects of the pathophysiology of human disease. Well-performed animal studies can determine the potential benefit of many proposed therapeutic interventions, and experimental results from animal studies have served as the basis for many landmark clinical trials. Many animal research models are described in the research literature, a...

Animal models are key in biomedical research as a proof of concept to study complex processes in a physiological context. Despite the small yet crucial role animals play in fundamental and applied research, the value of animal research is recurrently undermined. Lack of openness and transparency encourages misconceptions, which can have a dramatic negative impact on science and medicine. Resear...

We provide a brief review of the literature on exercise effects on brain and cognition. To this end, we focus on both prospective and retrospective human epidemiological studies that have examined the influence of exercise and physical activity on cognition and dementia. We then examine the relatively small set of human randomized clinical trials that have, for the most part, focused on exercis...