Food deprivation is known to affect physiology and behavior. Changes that occur could be the result of the organism's monitoring of internal and external nutrient availability. In C. elegans, male mating is dependent on food availability; food-deprived males mate with lower efficiency compared to their well-fed counterparts, suggesting that the mating circuit is repressed in low-food environmen...

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to determine the paired consequences of food restriction and paradoxical sleep deprivation on lipid profile and spontaneous glucose levels in male rats. METHOD Food restriction began at weaning, with 6 g of food being provided per day, which was subsequently increased by 1 g per week until reaching 15 g per day by the eighth week. At adulthood, both ra...

The present study used event-related brain potentials to examine deprivation effects on visual attention to food stimuli at the level of distinct processing stages. Thirty-two healthy volunteers (16 females) were tested twice 1 week apart, either after 24 h of food deprivation or after normal food intake. Participants viewed a continuous stream of food and flower images while dense sensor ERPs ...

OBJECTIVE To describe homeless youths' experiences of food insecurity and examine the relation between chronic food deprivation and food acquisition practices. DESIGN A cross-sectional survey of homeless youths was conducted in 2003 to assess their nutritional vulnerability and describe their food acquisition practices. SETTING Toronto, Canada. SUBJECTS Two hundred and sixty-one youths, a...

Food deprivation, as well as treatment with metabolic inhibitors, suppress steroid hormone-induced estrous behavior in ovariectomized (OVX) Syrian hamsters. Previous work indicates that 48 h of food deprivation decreases the number of detectable estrogen receptor immunoreactive (ERIR) cells in the ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH) and the area just lateral to it (VLH), increases the number of ERI...

Model organisms subject to dietary restriction (DR) generally live longer. Accompanying this lifespan extension are improvements in overall health, based on multiple metrics. This indicates that pharmacological treatments that mimic the effects of DR could improve health in humans. To find new chemical structures that extend lifespan, we screened 30 000 synthetic, diverse drug-like chemicals in...

Eretmocerus warrae (Naumann and Schimdt) is a thelytokous aphelinid parasitoid of the greenhouse whitefly, Trialeurodes vaporariorum (Westwood). It was first detected in New Zealand in 1997 during a survey of greenhouses in Auckland. We investigated the effects of certain duration of food and host deprivation after emergence on feeding, oviposition behavior and egg resorption of E. warrae with ...

Goal-directed behavior is governed by internal physiological states and external incentives present in the environment (e.g. hunger and food). While the role of the mesocorticolimbic dopamine (DA) system in behavior guided by environmental incentives has been well studied, the effect of relevant physiological states on the function of this system is less understood. The current study examined t...

Food hoarding plays an important role in the energetic repertoire of a variety of mammalian species. Both food hoarding and food intake have been examined in rodents using several energetic challenges including food deprivation, treatment with metabolic fuel blockers, and enhancement of fuel storage. In the present experiment, we examined food hoarding by female jirds (Meriones shawi), a desert...

Ma huang, the dried plant stem of ephedra intermedia Schrenk et C.A., contains an ephedrine-type alkaloid and has been used for weight loss. Neuropeptide Y (NPY), a 36-amino acid peptide, is concentrated in the hypothalamus and stimulates feeding desire. In this study, the effect of ma huang on the expressions of NPY in the hypothalamus of rats was investigated using immunohistochemistry. Food-...