The role of palatable food and hunger as trigger factors in an animal model of stress induced binge eating

Abstract

These effects suggest that binge eating in this model is motivated by reward, not metabolic need, and parallels observations of binge triggers described in clinical binge-eating disorders. This strengthens the validity of using this animal model to target the physiology and treatment of eating disorders preceded by dieting and stress.

The Anxiogenic Drug Yohimbine Reinstates Palatable Food Seeking in a Rat Relapse Model: a Role of CRF1 Receptors

“…These findings extend the recent observations of Hagan et al (2002Hagan et al ( , 2003, Dallman and co-workers (Pecoraro et al, 2004), and the earlier reports of Morley et al (1983) on the role of stress in palatable food-taking behavior. We also found that hungry rats that are given intermittent access to palatable food during training escalate their lever responding during nonreinforced timeout periods, suggesting the development of compulsive food-taking behavior and (or) increases in the motivational impact of the food-associated cues.…”

“…To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of progressive escalation of food-taking behavior in an operant model. Our data extend results from nonoperant studies in which food-restricted rats given intermittent access to palatable food progressively increased their food intake, an effect interpreted to indicate the development of binge-eating habits (Colantuoni et al, 2001;Hagan et al, 2002Hagan et al, , 2003Corwin and Buda-Levin, 2004). …”

“…This relapse is often induced by stress and anxiety states (Herman and Polivy, 1975;Crowther et al, 2001). Surprisingly, this issue has not yet been explored in preclinical studies, which have focused instead on the effect of stress on ongoing feeding behavior (Morley et al, 1983;Dallman et al, 2003;Hagan et al, 2003). The neuronal mechanisms underlying drug reward are known to overlap with those of food reward (Colantuoni et al, 2002;Volkow and Wise, 2005).…”

“…Rats were placed on a restricted diet (75-80% of their regular standard food) and were trained to lever press for palatable food pellets (25% fat, 48% carbohydrate) for 9 h/day every other day. We chose this training schedule and diet conditions because previous nonoperant food-consumption studies have shown that rats placed on a restricted diet and given intermittent access to palatable food develop binge-like eating behavior (Colantuoni et al, 2002;Corwin and BudaLevin, 2004) and become hypersensitive to the effect of stress on palatable food intake (Hagan et al, 2002(Hagan et al, , 2003. After self-administration training, the rats were subjected to extinction training during which lever presses were not reinforced.…”

Opioid-Dependent Anticipatory Negative Contrast and Binge-Like Eating in Rats with Limited Access to Highly Preferred Food

“…Current binge eating models emphasize a role for dietary restraint in promoting binge behavior (Howard and Porzelius, 1999), with many animal models positing that a history of quantitative food restriction, modeled by limiting the daily caloric ration (eg 66% of daily intake) (Hagan et al, 2003) or the duration of daily food access (eg 2 h) (Inoue et al, 2004), is central to bingeing. However, an alternative conceptualization might emphasize the qualitative aspect of dietary restraint, namely the attempted abstinence of binge eaters from 'forbidden,' palatable foods (Kales, 1990;Knight and Boland, 1989;Fletcher et al, 2007;Mitchell and Brunstrom, 2005;Gonzalez and Vitousek, 2004;Stirling and Yeomans 2004;Corwin, 2006;Corwin and Buda-Levin, 2004).…”