Will white noise help rats sleep?

[sbikp]

Hi, I am going to be doing some muti unit recordings from freely moving sleeping rats. Does any one know if white noise is useful in persuading a rat to sleep?  It would be useful as it might also control for noise levels between animals.  I presume "human white noise generators" might not be appropriate as they may be set to the wrong freq range for a rat.  However I am also worried that too high frequencies might even disturb the rat more than helps it sleep.  Any thoughts??

[diego]

i don´t know to much about that. but, some people use a radio in animal housing to buffer the noise. it's supposed that the sounds of the radio relax the animals. so this could be a kind of white noise interesting for your pourpouses.

[bodhi]

kind of an old thread but i'll post my thoughts:

i wouldnt recommend a white noise generator. it might be a little harsh and produce more stress than you'd like. i suppose it depends on how loud it would be. i think something like a small fan would serve your purposes better. in my experience, a small fan is great for masking most generic background noises. 

regardless, once the animal is well acclimated to the recording environment, you will have no problems getting them to sleep. they will slip in and out of slow-wave sleep often if you are recording during the day.