Work: a weak reinforcer.
01 May 1970-Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd)-Vol. 32, Iss: 5, pp 557-576
About: This article is published in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.The article was published on 1970-05-01. It has received 83 citations till now.
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TL;DR: The dietary obese rats did not normally defend their excessive weights since they were less willing to eat quinine diets, worked less for food, failed to increase their activity when deprived, and regained their weight at a slower rate following a fast than did controls.
568 citations
TL;DR: It is suggested that the feeding profile of the animal provides important clues as to whether or not the animal has an opiate-sensitive feeding system, and interactions with ingested nutrients and the milieu interieur provide an important means by which animals modulate the opiates-entrained feeding drives.
455 citations
TL;DR: This review proposes that wheel running may be an artefact of captive environments or of the running-wheel itself, possibly resulting from feedback dysfunction, and discusses the ubiquity and intensity of its performance, along with its great plasticity and maladaptiveness, all indicating that if it is an artefacts, it is nevertheless one of great interest to behavioural science.
442 citations
TL;DR: Gonadal hormones have important effects on the behaviors that determine body weight in laboratory rats, and may act directly on separate neural loci to inhibit food intake and stimulate locomotor activity, possibly by lowering the set-point of a hypothalamic lipostat.
371 citations
TL;DR: Differences between groups within species: the organization of sexual behavior in male and female rats is different, and the review points to a number of sex differences in instrumental behavior with sex, as reinforcer.
Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter discusses food, water, heat, locomotor activity, nest material, aggression, sex, and electrical stimulation of the brain, as reinforcer. Reinforcement is used in the experimental psychology to explain changes in behavior that reflect learning, and also to explain the continued occurrence of responses after they have been acquired. Most studies of reinforcement use rats or pigeons as subjects, food or electric shock as reinforcer, and the Skinner box or maze as test environment, but it is often assumed that principles and theories derived from such studies are applicable to other species, other reinforcers, other apparatus, and even to behavior in the animal's natural habitat. There are also differences between groups within species: the organization of sexual behavior in male and female rats is different, and the review points to a number of sex differences in instrumental behavior with sex, as reinforcer. This diversity clearly limits the kinds of generalizations that can be made about reinforcers, and indicates that the prediction of behavior can only be made after the reinforcer, species, and particular experience of the individual are known.
176 citations
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TL;DR: It is believed that spontaneous activity arises from certain underlying physiological origins within the animal organism, and from studies chiefly on the white rat what some of these origins are, and how they fit into the general biological picture of the animal's life are shown.
Abstract: BY CURT P. RICHTER Psychobiological Laboratory, Phipps Psychiatric Clinic, Johns Hopkins University O NE of the most fundamental of all the phenomena which characterize animal life and distinguish it from plant life is the spontaneous motility of the animal organism. A few plants, to be sure, especially certain forms of marine vegetation, do move about, but these few are exceptions in the plant kingdom. The activity of animals, on the other hand, although it varies widely in form and extent from species to species, is an ordinary phenomenon which one always anticipates under normal circumstances. We may ask, then, what it is that sets off the diverse performances which animals display. Ordinarily we think of most of their activity as being due to some form of external stimulation. We know, however, that all animals, from the lowest. uni-cellular organism to man, are active even when all external stimuli have been eliminated. And since this spontaneous motility, just as any other kind of motility, must have a definite cause, it must be due to some natural factor within the organism. Many workers have chosen to call it \"voluntary\" activity, presumably because of the common belief that the \"will\" to do is the origin of the ction. We believe, however, that spontaneous activity arises from certain underlying physiological origins. We shall attempt to show from studies chiefly on the white rat what some of these origins are, and how they fit into the general biological picture of the animal's life. The investigations described below have been made by Ging H. Wang, Elaine F. Kinder, Tomi Wada, and the present writer in the Psychobiological Laboratory of the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic during the past six years. Some of the experiments have already been reported elsewhere, but we have taken this opportunity to collect also numerous observations that are as yet unpublished. Of the extensive work on animal \"drives\" done by Hoskins (i92.5), Moss (I924), Slonaker (I924, I92X5, I92.6), Stone (I92.4, I92.5, I92.6), Szymanski (i92.0, i92.2.), and Tracy (i92.6) we shall incorporate in this review only that part which bears directly on our own method of approach or on our own experimental findings.
463 citations
TL;DR: It is shown that the development of hereditary obesity in mice can be considerably slowed down by forcing these animals to exercise.
Abstract: I T IS GENERALLY assumed that the relationship of food intake to exercise is one of direct proportionality above the basal level corresponding to inactivity. It is the purpose of the first part of this article to show that such a concept is an oversimplification at variance with the facts. Similarly, it is usually assumed that following exercise an obese animal or person will increase food intake in direct proportion, whatever the intake prior to exercise or the energy expended in exercise. It has been shown (I) that in the hereditary obese hyperglycemic syndrome (2, 3), a decrease in voluntary activity (to less than 2 % of the normal in adult animals) is an essential aspect of the etiology of the obesity; this lack of activity was shown to precede the development of the obesity and is not simply a result of the overweight (I). When obese mice also carry the waltzing gene and are in nearly constant rotary movement in their cages, their weight rarely exceeds 40 gm instead of twice that value. In another report (4) it has been demonstrated that mice made obese by goldthioglucose injection (2) will lose weight if given the opportunity to practice unrestricted exercise. It is the purpose of the second part of this paper to show that the development of hereditary obesity in mice can be considerably slowed down by forcing these animals to exercise.
372 citations
181 citations
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.
166 citations
TL;DR: Growing rats eating a lowprotein diet (8y0 casein) were markedly stunted but otherwise appeared healthy and had a greater capacity for prolonged running than the rats on the normal protein diet.
Abstract: CREWS, EUGENE L. III, K. WILLIAM FUGE, LAWRENCE B. OSCAI, JOHN 0. HOLLOSZY, AND ROBERT E. SHANK. kt’eight, food intake, and body cornposition: effects of exercise and protein dejiciency. Am. J. Physiol. 216(2): 359-363. 1969.-The effects of exercise and of protein deficiency, both separately and together, on food intake, weight gain, and body composition were studied. Exercising animals gained less weight than free-eating sedentary controls as a result of both an increase in caloric expenditure and a decrease in food intake. Exercise resulted in a significant decrease in the percentage of the carcass composed of fat, with a proportional relative increase in lean body mass. Sedentary calorie-restricted animals had a higher fat content than exercising animals of the same weight, suggesting a specific fat-mobilizing effect of exercise. Growing rats eating a lowprotein diet (8y0 casein) were markedly stunted but otherwise appeared healthy. They had a greater capacity for prolonged running than the rats on the normal protein diet. Protein deficiency resulted in a decrease in the percentage of the carcass composed of fat and an increase in the proportion made up of water. Because of the small size of the protein-deficient animals, total amounts of all four body constituents were markedly decreased.
137 citations