Effect of camphor essential oil on rat cerebral cortex activity as manifested by fractal dimension changes

G Grbic,S Spasic,M Sokovic,D Djokovic,L Martac,M Culic

doi:10.2298/abs0804547g

Abstract

The aim of our study was to investigate the effect of camphor essential oil on rat cerebral cortex activity by fractal analysis. Fractal dimension (FD) values of the parietal electrocortical activity were calculated before and after intra-peritoneal administration of camphor essential oil (450-675 ?l/kg) in anesthetized rats. Camphor oil induced seizure-like activity with single and multiple spiking of high amplitudes in the parietal electrocorticogram and occasional clonic limb convulsions. The FD values of cortical activity after camphor oil administration increased on the average. Only FD values of cortical ECoG sequences were lower than those before camphor oil administration.

Highlights

Plant-derived preparations, including those which influence brain function, are not inherently superior to synthetic substances with regard to efficacy and safety in matters related to human health (Johnston, 2003)
The effect of intraperitoneal administration of camphor essential oil can be recognized within 3-15 min after drug administration from amplitude and frequency changes in parietal electrocortical activity of both hemispheres, and at longer latency after camphor oil injection
On the example of rat C7 (Fig. 1), we found an increase of the mean Fractal dimension (FD) in the left cerebral cortex after intraperitoneal administration of 525 μl/kg of camphor oil

Summary

Introduction

Plant-derived preparations, including those which influence brain function, are not inherently superior to synthetic substances with regard to efficacy and safety in matters related to human health (Johnston, 2003). Essential oils containing large amounts of monoterpens like camphor and cineole could cause the epileptic activity in animals and humans (Steinmetz et al, 1987; Medvedev, 1990; R u h a et al, 2003). Our recent results on brain activity after injury as studied by fractal analysis (Spasić et al, 2005 a) indicate the possibility of using such analysis as a promising tool for recognition of some pathophysiological states. Epileptogenic activity as a dangerous consequence of essential oil activity represented a new challenge for our investigation. It is still unclear whether normal electroencephalographic signals have a higher complexity than signals related to pathological states (epileptic seizures, for example), which exhibit low dimensional complexity. The prediction of epileptic seizure from electroencephalograph recordings is an open issue and there is still no method that can reliably provide predictions despite the success of many methods from different fields, such as nonlinear dynamics and chaos, neural networks, statistical testing etc. (S t a m, 2005; Kugiumitzs et al, 2007)

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