There is a publication from Mark Wightman group comparing DA overflow (release and reuptake) in the caudate after stimulation of the DA neurons during anesthesia and in the same awake animals. They used FCV. As far as I remember release was not much affected, but uptake was a bit slower after chloral hydrate. To make amperometry less noisy you may use much more sensitive carbon fiber electrodes as for example electrodes manufactured from 30-32 micron fiber. Indeed, this will not improve selectivity.

Dear Chiara,

Try Fentanyl it could do the trick for you.

Best,

Mannan 

The issue with Fentanyl (as with any other anesthetic) is that is can trigger the release of dopamine by by itself. We do our experiments with awake rats, wouldn't it work for you? See the methods section of the attached paper.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10426490

Article Sustained relief of ongoing experimental neuropathic pain by...

thank you! I had also found this paper and was a bit concerned. The problem with continuous amperometry is that the animal cannot be freely moving as the amperometry read-out would be very noisy and have poor specificity of the neurochemical being measured. I guess perhaps I could have awake animals and use a neuromuscular blocker..? anyone have any experience of this? 

In my experience, halothane, pentobarbital, chloral hydrate and urethane all decreased dopamine release in major terminal projection fields of A9 and A10 dopamine neurons (frontal cortex, nucleus accumbens, caudate-putamen) in the rat. In contrast, ketamine elevated dopamine release in the frontal cortex but did not affect dopamine release in the striatum (=caudate-putamen) and nucleus accumbens).

There is a publication from Mark Wightman group comparing DA overflow (release and reuptake) in the caudate after stimulation of the DA neurons during anesthesia and in the same awake animals. They used FCV. As far as I remember release was not much affected, but uptake was a bit slower after chloral hydrate. To make amperometry less noisy you may use much more sensitive carbon fiber electrodes as for example electrodes manufactured from 30-32 micron fiber. Indeed, this will not improve selectivity.

We decided on nitrous oxide. We discuss the rationale briefly in this publication:  http://www.jneurosci.org/content/17/9/3168.long (search for "N2O").  The basic idea is that in studies ion which dopamine agonists were applied, there are publications showing differential effects awake vs with almost every other anesthetic you can think of.