English
 
Help Privacy Policy Disclaimer
  Advanced SearchBrowse

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Released

Journal Article

Reward components of feeding behavior are preserved during mouse aging

MPS-Authors
/persons/resource/persons138097

Harb,  Mazen R.
Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Max Planck Society;

/persons/resource/persons80249

Almeida,  Osborne F.X.
Dept. Stress Neurobiology and Neurogenetics, Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Max Planck Society;

External Resource
No external resources are shared
Fulltext (restricted access)
There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.
Fulltext (public)

fnagi-06-00242.pdf
(Any fulltext), 2MB

Supplementary Material (public)
There is no public supplementary material available
Citation

Harb, M. R., Sousa, N., Zihl, J., & Almeida, O. F. (2014). Reward components of feeding behavior are preserved during mouse aging. FRONTIERS IN AGING NEUROSCIENCE, 6: 242. doi:10.3389/fnagi.2014.00242.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0024-6625-3
Abstract
Eating behavior depends on associations between the sensory and energetic properties of foods. Healthful balance of these factors is a challenge for industrialized societies that have an abundance of food, food choices and food-related cues. Here, we were interested in whether appetitive conditioning changes as a function of age. Operant and pavlovian conditioning experiments (rewarding stimulus was a palatable food) in male mice (aged 3, 6, and 15 months) showed that implicit (non-declarative) memory remains intact during aging. Two other essential components of eating behavior, motivation and hedonic preference for rewarding foods, were also found not to be altered in aging mice. Specifically, hedonic responding by satiated mice to isocaloric foods of differing sensory properties (sucrose, milk) was similar in all age groups; importantly, however, this paradigm disclosed that older animals adjust their energy intake according to energetic need. Based on the assumption that the mechanisms that control feeding are conserved across species, it would appear that overeating and obesity in humans reflects a mismatch between ancient physiological mechanisms and today's cue-laden environment. The implication of the present results showing that aging does not impair the ability to learn stimulus-food associations is that the risk of overeating in response to food cues is maintained through to old age.