In urethane anesthetized rats the icv (lateral cerebral ventricle) administration of ketamine, at the highest utilized doses, induced bradypnea and sinus bradycardia in spontaneously breathing rats. Moreover, it partially antagonized the arrhythmogenic activities of sodium glutamate and sodium aspartate, as well as desipramine and ouabain. From these results, we conclude that ketamine had an inhibitory effect on the centrogenic arrhythmias not only acting at the level of NMDA subtype receptor, but also at beta 1 adrenergic central receptors. Moreover at high doses, ketamine can also induce centrogenic arrhythmias in spontaneously breathing rats
