The Strength-Duration Function in the Evocation of Direct Cortical Responses

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Abstract
The strength-duration function of single rectangular electrical stimuli which are required for eliciting threshold direct cortical responses in the primary somatosensory area was studied in rats anesthetized with 20 and 60 mg/kg of sodium pentobarbitone. The high linear correlation of the charge-duration data indicated that the strength-duration curve for threshold cortical activation closely resembles a hyperbolic function. Cortical chronaxie obtained from deeply anesthetized rats was higher than that obtained from slightly anesthetized ones. It is concluded that the chronaxie appears to be a significant discriminative intrinsic parameter for the quantitative characterization of excitation resulting from electrical stimulation of the cerebral cortex.