Assessment of ether anesthesia in normal and spinal cats using gas--liquid chromatographic analysis of blood

A new gas-liquid chromatographic method was developed for the determination of diethylether in whole blood. Ether was quantitated by peak area ratio analysis with n-propanol as the internal standard using a flame ionization detector. Blood ether concentrations were determined in cats undergoing inhalational anesthesia by ether in oxygen. In normal spontaneously breathing cats, anesthesia began at ether concentrations of about 0.6 g/l, and respiratory arrest occurred at 2.4 g/l and above. Mean arterial blood pressure was well maintained throughout the entire anesthetic range. In spinal artificially respired animals, mean arterial blood pressure correlated inversely with blood ether concentration. The data suggest that decline in blood pressure may be a useful sign of ether toxicity in spinal cats.     

Computerized topographical analysis of functionally homogeneous neuronal sets.

A computer-assisted analysis of the spatial distribution of neurons having homogeneous characteristics is described in this paper. The camera lucida drawings of sections of a brain nucleus and the points representing the neurons labeled on the basis of a specific behavior of discharge rates were digitized on a personal computer Amiga 2000 or IBM compatible. Our software provided: a) the computerized, stereotaxically oriented reconstruction of the stored sections and of the plotted neurons; b) the identification within each section of the mass center (MC) of the units sharing a given behavior and of the area where the density of such neurons was maximal (MDA). The routine was tested on the spatial distribution of neuronal responses to serotonin in the lateral vestibular nucleus.