Effects of preoperative training on food-motivated behavior of hypothalamic hyperphagic rats.

Abstract

Conducted an experiment in which 35 female Holtzman albino rats with lesions in the ventromedial hypothalamic area performed significantly more poorly than 18 normal controls on a food-motivated task. This result was obtained, however, only if Ss were not preoperatively trained on the task. Ss trained preoperatively did not show any deficit and their performance was comparable to that of normal Ss. Findings suggest that the performance of hypothalamic hyperphagic rats on appetitively motivated tasks is a function of training and testing conditions rather than lower food motivation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)