2013 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Characteristics of postural control disturbances in rats with or without brain lesion

Research Project

Project/Area Number	23650330
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Research Field	Rehabilitation science/Welfare engineering
Research Institution	Sapporo Medical University
Principal Investigator	SASAKI Takeshi 札幌医科大学, 保健医療学部, 助教 (20535562)
Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha)	MATSUYAMA Kiyoji 札幌医科大学, 保健医療学部, 教授 (40209664)
Project Period (FY)	2011 – 2013
Keywords	姿勢調節 / 重心動揺 / 脳損傷 / 動物実験
Research Abstract	This study aimed to investigate the characteristics of the postural control in rats with or without lesion of sensorimotor cortex (SMC). For this purpose, we developed a novel posturography technique to measure changes of center of pressure (COP) of small animals including rats during inclination of a floor surface at different angle velocities and in antero-posterior and left-right directions. In some animals, fore- and hind-limb extensor EMGs were measured simultaneously together with COP changes during floor inclination. Rats exhibited dynamic COP changes and phasic EMG activities along with increase of floor inclination. However, rats with lesion of SMC showed different patterns of postural change and uncoordinated EMG activities. This indicated that rats exhibited dynamic postural adjustments in response to postural perturbation and also indicated that this postural adjustment was impaired by lesion of SMC.

(4 results)