抄録
Measurements of autonomic nervous activities are thought to be useful to assess health conditions and physical ages. However, their measurement methods have not been established in dogs. A new apparatus (Kiritsu Meijin®) was developed that can measure autonomic nervous activities automatically, simply, easily and quickly in humans. In this study, we investigated whether autonomic nervous activities in dogs could be measured by using this apparatus. The results obtained were as follows. 1) Although heart rate increased in each dog in active standing tests, the change of autonomic nervous activities was not constant. 2) In the heart rate variability analysis, antagonistic reflexes were not observed between sympathetic nerve activity (LF/HF ratio) and parasympathetic one (HF) in some cases. These findings may reflect restlessness and/or unique breathing maneuver in dogs, which would have significantly affected the heart rate variability. These results suggest that although the new apparatus for human autonomic nervous activities will not necessarily useful for dogs, it can be used for tame dogs.
