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The left femoral artery was cannulated for continuous monitoring of arterial blood pressure using a transducer (DTX Plus DT-XX; Becton Dickinson, Sandy, UT, USA) connected to an amplifier (PM-1000; CWE, Ardmore, PA, USA). After a tracheostomy, the trachea was cannulated and the rats were ventilated (model 7025; Ugo Basile, Comerio, VA, Italy) with oxygen-enriched air (40% v:v, 1.0 L/min, 2.5–3.5 mL per stroke, 80–100 strokes per minute), and end-tidal CO2 was monitored (CapStar-100; CWE) and maintained between 3.5% and 4.5%. The rats were placed on a heating blanket with a DC-power supply designed to emit only extremely low levels of electromagnetic-radiofrequency (EMF-RF) noise interference and thermostatically regulated by continuous feedback from a thermistor circuit (Homeothermic blanket system; Harvard Apparatus, Holliston, MA, USA) to maintain core body temperature at 37 ± 0.5 °C. The rat’s heads were fixed in a stereotaxic frame (Kopf Instruments, Tujunga, CA, USA). Data regarding the variables described above, blood pressure, tidal CO2, and core temperature, was fed to a data acquisition system (Power 1401, CED, Cambridge, UK) and laptop computer where they were continuously displayed and monitored to assist maintenance between physiological limits, and stored on hard disk.