Original ArticlesMathematical determination of feeding patterns and its consequence on correlational studies
Section snippets
Animal model and housing
Thirty-one adult male Wistar rats weighing 283 ± 48 g at the beginning of the experiment were housed individually in special cylindrical cages with a floor surface of 491 cm2 and 42 cm height, placed in a room with constant temperature (24 ± 1°C) and a LD12:12 (L = 0600–1800 hours) light-dark cycle and a light intensity of 300 Lux. Animals were fed with standard laboratory chow (Extralabo M25 in powder form), the detailed composition of which was described elsewhere (18). In all cases, water
Results
Results are presented in the following order: 1) the experimental validation of the method; 2) the definition of pauses and intervals and, consequently, of meals; 3) the determination of the feeding patterns; and 4) their potential correlations.
Discussion
The contribution of this work concerns two different questions of ingestive behavior: the methodological approach which is the basis for the definition of the feeding parameters and the consequence of an appropriate definition on the important question of the correlation between meal size and inter-meal interval. The importance of these questions is of course related to the physiological implications of such correlational investigations.
From the methodological point of view, this work
Acknowledgements
Authors thank Mr. Jacques Rouault for performing the mathematical analysis of the data and Mr. Laurent Poirier for his skillful technical and computing help.
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Present address: Dr. Stylianos Nicolaidis, Institut Européen des Sciences du Goût et des Comportements Alimentaires (IESGCA), C.N.R.S. U.P.R. 9054, Campus de Montmuzard, 15 rue Hugues Picardet, 21000 Dijon, France. E-mail: [email protected]