scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question
Journal ArticleDOI

Feeding patterns of rats in response to fasts and changes in environmental conditions

01 Mar 1970-Physiology & Behavior (Elsevier)-Vol. 5, Iss: 3, pp 291-300
TL;DR: Following any reduction of food intake imposed either by the experimenter or as a result of water restriction or the consumption of an unpalatable diet, food intake was adjusted almost entirely by increasing meal size.
About: This article is published in Physiology & Behavior.The article was published on 1970-03-01. It has received 166 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Meal.
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Any change in performance of the instrumental behavior ancillary to feeding which causes the values of these parameters to recover their optimum or privileged value, defined by their niche, will be strengthened.

393 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is hypothesized that food, which is certainly a necessary commodity with powerful positive reinforcing qualities, also provides a potential threat to organisms, including humans, and that defenses against eating too much may become activated inappropriately and contribute to clinical problems such as reactive hypoglycemia.
Abstract: It is hypothesized that food, which is certainly a necessary commodity with powerful positive reinforcing qualities, also provides a potential threat to organisms, including humans. The act of eating, although necessary for the provision of energy, is a particularly disruptive event in a homeostatic sense. Just as humans learn responses to help them tolerate the administration of dangerous drugs, so do they learn to make anticipatory responses that help minimize the impact of meals on the body, to limit the amount of food consumed within any individual meal, to recruit several parts of the protective stress-response system while meals are being processed, and to limit postprandial behaviors so as to minimize the possibility of disrupting homeostatic systems even more. It is further hypothesized that defenses against eating too much may become activated inappropriately and contribute to clinical problems such as reactive hypoglycemia.

326 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Rats responded faster when portions were smaller or when prices were higher, and meal size and frequency were relatively unaffected by unit price, but were influenced by the price of meal initiation.
Abstract: A corollary of the law of effect predicts that the larger the reinforcement, the greater the rate of responding. However, an animal must eat more small portions than large portions to obtain the same daily intake, and one would predict, therefore, that when eating smaller portions an efficient animal would eat less (conserving time and energy) and/or respond faster (conserving time). The latter of these predictions was supported by the present experiments with free-feeding rats for which portion size (pellet size or duration of feeder presentation) and portion price within meals were varied. Response rate was a function of the unit price (responses/g) of food: Rats responded faster when portions were smaller or when prices were higher. Meal size and frequency were relatively unaffected by unit price, but were influenced by the price of meal initiation. The results are discussed in relation to the economic differences between traditional operant and free-feeding paradigms and to both traditional and more recent formulations of the law of effect.

202 citations

References
More filters
Book
01 Jan 1964
TL;DR: Comparing targeted patching algorithms against a benchmark uniformly random patching strategy and proposing a new containment strategy by partitioning mobiles appropriately based on their social relationship graph are compared.
Abstract: Constructed a topology graph of social relations between mobiles by extracting patterns from network traffic traces Propose a new containment strategy by partitioning mobiles appropriately based on their social relationship graph Experimentally compare our targeted patching algorithms against a benchmark uniformly random patching strategy The architecture graph of our systematic worm containment strategy

2,869 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Jean Mayer1
TL;DR: With the collaboration of Anliker, an experimental psychologist versed in the “Skinner box” techniques, the study of the probability of response to exposure to food and on the frequency of work for food of normal mice, as well as of littermates with the hereditary obese hyperglycemic syndrome, goldthioglucose obesity, and hypothalamic obesity is undertaken.
Abstract: The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines hunger as (1) a craving for food, and (2) any strong craving. Appetite is defined as the natural desire for satisfying some want or need, as of food. Other definitions have introduced emphasis on this or that component. Carlson,’ for example, has defined hunger as “a more or less uncomfortable feeling of pressure and pain referred to the region of the stomach”; Grossman and Stein: in an excellent article on hunger feelings following insulin and their persistence after vagotomy, have distinguished between the sensation of being “hungry all over” and epigastric pangs. Other authors have emphasized differences in psychic associations, as well as in intensity, between appetite and hunger. All these considerations should make it clear that hunger and appetite are generally understood to be sensations or feelings that, as such, are not properly amenable to regulation. The sensory meaning has been so generally accepted that, desirable though it may be to reject it, as suggested by Doctor Hollander, it seems a little late in the day to do so. It is even diflicult to record the appearance of these sensations and, a fortiori, their intensity, except through a behavioristic approach. As all of us have known empirically since childhood and as can be clearly evidenced in the laboratory, a multiplicity of factors, emotions, urges, environmental temperature, necessity for exercise, will interfere to modify the tendency to partake of food. Often, the course of action in time of these factors is complex: acute exposure to cold will inhibit tendency to eat in a first phase, yet increase it later. When dealing with a problem which can be attacked only behavioristically and which depends on a multiplicity of variables, the only systematic approach that I know of is the statistical method of Skinner, who studied the frequency or probability of responses to this or that stimulus. With the collaboration of Anliker, an experimental psychologist versed in the “Skinner box” techniques (as well as in electronics and recording techniques), we have recently embarked on the study of the probability of response to exposure to food and on the frequency of work for food of normal mice, as well as of littermates with the hereditary obese hyperglycemic syndrome, goldthioglucose obesity, and hypothalamic obesity. This study will enable us, we hope, to obtain analysis of correlations of response to various physiologic stimuli, as well as an exploration of how much conditioning can be introduced in these responses. Results, however, are too preliminary to warrant a report a t this date. Even then, of course, they will not deal with a regulation, but only with a pattern of feeding.

821 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The investigation was designed to ascertain how an animal solves conflicts, and practices priorities, in its bodily maintenance, by forcing into the metabolism of an animal considerable quantities of various ingested materials that would ordinarily be refused.
Abstract: Studies of nutrition usually depend upon the animal’s urges to eat and to drink. But little has been done to find what factors of the diet rn&l3y those urges. When body weight is employed as a measure of nutritive state, the observer ordinarily is assuming that intake has been sufficient to supply whatever is available. If weight has been lost he often assumes that the diet is inadequate qualitatively and not quantitatively. To what extent is this confidence in the urges toward maintenance justified? The following aspects of intake are here investigated: e$ect of dilution of food by roughage, effect of flavoring, effect of dilution of food by water, forcing of water intake by mixture of water with food, and after-effects of partial or complete privation of food, or of water, or of both. The investigation was designed to ascertain how an animal solves conflicts, and practices priorities, in its bodily maintenance. If it be obliged to ingest an excess of water while obtaining food, how much excess will it take? If more than the requirement of some constituent cannot be avoided, will the total intake be in excess of metabolic uses ? In general, how much excess of A in the diet will reduce or stop the intake of B? How are conflicts of metabolisms compromised, and do the urges of intake correspond to a pattern that favors maintenance of the individual,* without or with the connivance of the machinery of outputs? By answering such questions, even in part, the physiological organization of the animal body can be partially described. In a general way it is recognized (1) that mammals often gauge intakes according to certain nutritive values, in spite of inequalities of form and substance in various diets. But it is also known that some constituents of food or drink act as deterrents to ingestion, as is illustrated by substitution of sea water for fresh water (2). The investigation included attempts to induce rats to ingest, large quantities of water, simply by mixing the water with the food available to the animals. As a consequence, a general method was worked out of forcing into the metabolism of an animal considerable quantities of various ingested materials that would ordinarily be refused. Help in the experiments was received from M. C. Nudo, S. Parmington and M. M. Stiler. Aid in completing the investigation was derived from a contract between the Army Air Forces and the University of Rochester. Mixtures of food with roughage. What characteristics of foods may guide rats’ food consumption? Are the textbooks correct in suggesting that alimentary fill is a chief requirement of the animal? Male white rats were furnished first with an adequate dry food (chow) ad libitum, then later given the same food thoroughly mixed with a form of roughage (cellulose or kaolin). Water was

427 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Neal E. Miller1
TL;DR: The possibility of increasing the knowledge of the central effects of drugs by combining the techniques of using implanted electrodes for electrical stimulation of the brain of the unanesthetized animal with the behavioral techniques for studying avoidance and also reward learning is pointed to.
Abstract: In studying the effects of drugs on motivation it is desirable to use a number of techniques that are as diverse as possible in order to avoid misleading generalizations from effects that are specific to the particular indicator used. Some of the preceding papers by students of Fred Skinner have shown unusual ingenuity in using the same instrumental response (pressing a lever or pecking a t a panel) in a variety of different testing situations. There are definite advantages to this procedure of using the same response in a variety of different tests, and the tests that have been described in the other papers have many additional excellent attributes. For example, bar pressing reinforced on a variable-interval schedule may be maintained a t a constant rate for a considerable time with relatively minor consumption of food (and satiation of drive), so that the course of drug effects may be followed economically throughout fairly long periods. Nevertheless, I believe it is also desirable to have tests that are still more diverse in that they do not depend on the same response and, hence, can insure us against being misled by effects that are specific to that response. In this connection the standardization of naturalistic observation so interestingly presented in the first paper (de Beer and Norton, 1956) should prove fruitful. Since I am advocating the use of a diversity of behavioral measures, i t will be appropriate to illustrate the application of a variety of techniques to a number of different problems. I t will be efficient to begin with a brief reference to the development and use of certain measuring techniques in nonpharmacological studies of “hunger” and “thirst” followed by a description of the application of the same measures to a study of the effects of amphetamine. Next I shall describe some techniques for studying conflict behavior that were used in a theoretical and experimental analysis of some of the social effects of alcohol. I shall also mention an attempt to develop a new behavioral measure of fear-motivated behavior and to use this measure to compare the effects of reserpine on a response motivated by fear with its effects on the same response motivated by hunger. I shall point to the possibility of increasing our knowledge of the central effects of drugs by combining the techniques of using implanted electrodes for electrical stimulation of the brain of the unanesthetized animal with the behavioral techniques for studying avoidance and also reward learning. I shall conclude with the importance of basic research in the development of a science of psychopharmacology (or, if you prefer, behavioral pharmacology) that eventually may provide a rational basis for practical applications to mental hygiene in the same way that organic chemistry provides a basis for the synthesis of new compounds.

174 citations