The rewarding effect produced by electrically stimulating certain sites in the lateral hypothalamus (LH) can be potentiated by food restriction and body weight loss in lean rats. Central leptin and insulin administration can suppress the rewarding impact of the stimulation. To determine whether there are additional peripheral signals that mediate the effect of weight loss on brain reward circui...

Rats' voluntary ethanol intake varies with dispositional factors and energy status. The joint influences of these were of interest here. We previously reported that rats selectively bred for high voluntary saccharin intake (HiS) consume more ethanol and express more robust conditioning of preference for flavors paired with voluntarily consumed ethanol than do low-saccharin consuming counterpart...

Faced with reduced levels of food, animals must adjust to the consequences of the shortfall in energy. We explored how C57BL/6 mice withdrew energy from different body tissues during three months of food restriction at graded levels up to 40% (calorie restriction: CR). We compared this to the response to equivalent levels of protein restriction (PR) without a shortfall in calories. Under CR the...