Apparatus for measurement of dynamic body equilibrium in the guinea pig

An apparatus for the measurement of dynamic bodily equilibrium function in guinea pigs was made and its applicability was investigated. This apparatus consists of two cubical boxes (one of them is the starting box, and the other the goal box) connected by a 30 cm wide, 150 cm long, and 20 cm high straight platform. From the grids mounted on the floor of the starting box, an electric stimulation was given to make them run fully on the platform toward the goal box. On the floor of the platform, except for the 7 cm wide center line, 6 channels (3 channels on each side) of pressor-sensor-type recording system are installed. Thus, the animal's running performance is recorded by multi-channel pen recorder. At first, the animals should be screened and trained. Mostly the animals have learned to run with minimal deviations in several tens of training runnings. Thus, when the training period was over, five animals were selected to determine the recovery process of locomotion after the unilateral labyrinthectomy. The obtained results depicted through the gradual decrement of deviation count and running time were consistent with the previously reported results using other animals. Therefore, it could be concluded that this recovery process of bodily dysequilibrium measured by this test procedure must reflect the vestibular compensation of this animal.