Patterns of electrical activity in the digestive tract of the conscious cat

1. Bipolar electrodes were permanently implanted on the gastric antrum, and on the different portions of the small intestine of each of eleven healthy adult cats receiving one meal daily. All parts of the feline gut exhibited, as in several other species, regular slow waves and alternate periods of quiescence and electrical spiking activity during the recording sessions lasting from 10 to 30 d. 2. Patterns of electrical activity characteristic of this species were identified. Both the amplitude and frequency of the antral slow-wave were related to the presence of superimposed spike bursts during fasting. A decrease in the antral slow-wave frequency and increase in the length of the duodenal plateau of slow waves after the daily meal were related to its nature. 3. In fasted state, the electrical spiking activity of the small intestine occurred as fused spike bursts of large amplitude potentials migrating slowly over short distances only 24 h after feeding. They are interspersed with short periods of irregular spiking activity. 4. These findings suggested that, except the distal part of the small intestine which showed an activity which resembled partially the migrating myoelectric complex observed in other species during the fasting state, the motility patterns of the digestive tract in the cat were not comparable to those observed in the dog or sheep. In the cat, mixing of the contents seemed to result from more or less regular spiking activity allowing their propulsion distally. The propagation over distances varying from 200 to 1000 mm of nine to eighteen daily fused spike bursts in the fasting state remains unclear but they are related to the digestive function in accordance with the displacement aborally of their origin in a prolonged fasting condition.