The isolated perfused rat brain as a model for studying drugs acting on the CNS

An isolated perfused brain preparation is regarded as offering some important advantages over intact animals or tissue slices for studying drug effects on the CNS. The rat is by far the most suitable laboratory animal for this technique because of low cost, ease of preparation and extensive literature available for comparative purposes. In this paper various preparation techniques and perfusion systems for an isolated rat brain are reported. Investigations are presented proving the viability of the isolated perfused rat brain for more than seven hours and its suitability for studies on cerebral metabolism. Until now this preparation has been successfully used for pharmacological investigati…