Food deprivation and responsiveness for lateral hypothalamic stimulation

Abstract

Rats were run for hypothalamic intracranial stimulation (ICS) every day for 32 days in an alley maze. On one-half of the days, rats were deprived of food for 24 h. Rats ran the first trial of a day faster for ICS when food deprived. Running speed remained relatively constant across testing when deprived, but slowly increased across the days when rats were not deprived. Range of responsiveness across deprivation-nondeprivation conditions was small compared to range of responsiveness across Ss, indicating that deprivation itself was a minor determinant of the reinforcing value of ICS.

Runway performance of rats for brain-stimulation or food reward: Effects of hunger and priming.

“…It should be noted that Rose, Hunsicker, and Reid (1972) found, among other things, a similar first-trial increase in running speed with food deprivation, but because the effect was small compared with the variability between animals, they concluded that the increase was not dramatic enough to be in agreement with the Deutsch model. In our experiment a more dramatic effect was observed with less variability from animal to animal.…”