Mild insomnia induced by environmental perturbations in the rat: a study of this new model and of its possible applications in pharmacological research.

This paper describes an experimental model for testing new products in a situation where sleep is impaired by a nonpharmacological procedure. This model consists in studying the effect of hypnogenic substances on sleep perturbations which take place when chronically implanted rats are moved to a novel individual cage, connected for the first time to their recording cable and dosed intragastrically with test products, vehicle or placebo. Continuous polygraphic recordings were taken throughout the daily treatment period (15 days) and scored for the presence of slow wave sleep (SWS), and rapid eye movement sleep (REM).