Effect of the Level of Anesthesia on the Auditory Brainstem Response in the Emei Music Frog (Babina daunchina)

PLoS One. 2017 Jan 5;12(1):e0169449. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0169449. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

Anesthesia is known to affect the auditory brainstem response (ABR) in mice, rats, birds and lizards. The present study investigated how the level of anesthesia affects ABR recordings in an amphibian species, Babina daunchina. To do this, we compared ABRs evoked by tone pip stimuli recorded from 35 frogs when Tricaine methane sulphonate (MS-222) anesthetic immersion times varied from 0, 5 and 10 minutes after anesthesia induction at sound frequencies between 0.5 and 6 kHz. ABR thresholds increased significantly with immersion time across the 0.5 kHz to 2.5 kHz frequency range, which is the most sensitive frequency range for hearing and the main frequency range of male calls. There were no significant differences for anesthetic levels across the 3 kHz to 6 kHz range. ABR latency was significantly longer in the 10 min group than in the 0 and 5 min groups at frequencies of 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.5 kHz, while ABR latency did not differ across the 3 kHz to 4 kHz range and at 2.0 kHz. Taken together, these results show that the level of anesthesia affects the amplitude, threshold and latency of ABRs in frogs.

MeSH terms

  • Acoustic Stimulation
  • Aminobenzoates / pharmacology
  • Anesthesia / methods*
  • Animals
  • Brain Stem / drug effects*
  • Evoked Potentials, Auditory, Brain Stem / drug effects
  • Female
  • Male
  • Ranidae

Substances

  • Aminobenzoates
  • tricaine

Grants and funding

This work was supported by Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS, CAS “Light of West China” Program, National Natural Science Foundation of China (31270042) and Youth Professor Project of CIB (Y3B3011) to JC. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.