Timing and anticipation: conceptual and methodological approaches

Abstract

Anticipation occurs on timescales ranging from milliseconds to hours to days. This paper relates the theoretical and methodological developments in the study of interval timing in the seconds, minutes and hours range to research on the anticipatory activity induced by regularly timed daily meals. Daily food anticipatory activity (FAA) is entrained by procedures which are formally identical to procedures studied in Pavlovian and Operant conditioning except for the long duration of the interval between feeding opportunities. As in FAA, the conditioning procedures induce orderly anticipatory activity in advance of food presentation. During the interval between foods the behaviors that express anticipation change as the interval progresses. Consequently, no single response represents a pure measure of anticipation. The ability to distinguish between properties of general anticipatory timing mechanisms such as the scalar property (Gibbon, 1977) and dynamic properties of specific response output systems has been facilitated by teaching animals to use arbitrary anticipatory responses like bar pressing to obtain food. Interval timing research highlights the importance of identifying the mechanisms of perception, memory, decision making and motivation that all contribute to food anticipation. We suggest that future work focused on the similarities and differences in the neural bases of FAA and interval timing may be useful in unravelling the mechanisms mediating timing behavior.

Circadian food anticipatory activity: Entrainment limits and scalar properties re-examined.

“…It has been suggested that anticipatory operant behaviors may emerge at an earlier point in the intermeal interval than wheel-running or general locomotor behavior, making operant behaviors a more sensitive measure of anticipatory activity in feeding schedules with meals provided at intervals of less than 24 hr (Balsam et al, 2009;Crystal, 2001aCrystal, , 2006aCrystal, , 2006b. Although this proposal is arguably counterintuitive (animals must first awaken before they can start working for food), we nonetheless sought evidence to substantiate the idea that apparent limits to antic ipation might depend on the behavioral measures.…”

Goldfish spexin: solution structure and novel function as a satiety factor in feeding control

“…In the unfed control of our study on the postprandial changes in SPX gene expression, transient drops in basal levels of SPX transcript were also noted in the hypothalamus and optic tectum during the scheduled feeding period. These may be related to the food-anticipatory responses commonly reported in entrained animals (2). In goldfish with proper entrainment, NPY mRNA levels could be upregulated in brain areas, including diencephalon and hypothalamus, during the meal time without food administration (21).…”

Metabolic and reward feeding synchronises the rhythmic brain

“…The existence of a feedingentrainable clock does not exclude the participation of memory processing (e.g. conditioning; Balsam et al 2009) and hourglass mechanisms (e.g. depletion of glycogen stores; Mistlberger 2009) in food anticipation.…”