Rotarod Evaluation of Motor Coordination

Experiments for evaluation of motor coordination balance of the animals were performed on the Rotarod apparatus (EFF412, Insight, Ribeirão Preto, SP, Brazil) as described in [64 (link)] and carried out with some modifications. The Rotarod is a rotating cylinder with a radius of 2.7 cm and a height of 40 cm. The device has four bays with 3 cm of space for each mouse. Four animals were evaluated in parallel. Animals that remain for a longer time in the rotating system of the device were considered better in motor coordination and equilibrium. The performance of Rotarod was continuously measured on a rotating rod since the mice should move forward to avoid falling. The animals were initially exposed to a pre-training for two consecutive days at four different speeds (16, 24, 28, and 32 rpm) for 3 min each, following the protocol of [65 (link)] modified. Animals that remained up 5 s were excluded according to [66 (link)]. On the 30th day, the animals were again placed on the rod three times in the accelerated mode when the residence time on the rotating rod in sec was recorded for up two minutes as [67 (link)].