Anxiety in rats submitted to space restriction in the Elevated Cross Labyrinth

Iran Johnathan Silva Oliveira, Jéssica Soares Peixoto, Ingridyara Nunes Maciel Castelo Branco, Wellington de Souza Moura. Marcus Antonio de Araujo Caminha, Jaquline de Paula e Silva Maria Eliza Alves Teixeira, Gabriella Gomes de Azevedo Coelho Santana.

Abstract

The Elevated Cross Labyrinth (LCE) is an instrument model used to measure anxiety, which is an emotional anticipation of a threatening situation or environment, in this way, the LCE reproduces these situations and environments in order to if a study is made possible, in order to observe the changes in the subject's behavior, in the face of these changes, reaching the desired result. The present work aims to measure the anxiety level of Wistar rodents, when exposed to the open arms of the ECL, making them explore the environment. This is an experimental laboratory study, which was used, at first, without space restrictions; and, in the second and third, with space restriction, in order to verify the behavior of exploration of the open and closed arms. Thirty experimental subjects (male rats, three months old) were chosen, with a time limit of 5 minutes in each session. With the experimentation, it was observed that there was no exploration of the open arms by the Control Group, but by the Space Restriction Group 1 there was an increase in the exploratory movement; and in Space Restriction Group 2, the last phase of the experiment, results of a higher level of exploration of the open arms were obtained, than in the other groups. Noting that the objectives presented at first by this research were achieved, with further exploration in the Space Restriction Group 2