Archival ReportGhrelin Increases the Rewarding Value of High-Fat Diet in an Orexin-Dependent Manner
Section snippets
Animals and Housing
Male mice were housed in a 12-hour light/dark cycle with regular chow (RC) (4 g% fat, diet #7001, Harlan-Teklad, Madison, Wisconsin), which provides 2.9 kcal/g of energy, and water available ad lib, except when indicated. All animal procedures were carried out in accordance with National Institutes of Health guidelines and University of Texas Southwestern Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee guidelines. Adult (8–10 weeks old) C57BL6/J mice were from Jackson Laboratory (Sacramento,
Results
To investigate a role for ghrelin in the rewarding properties of HFD, we adapted a version of the CPP task that is typically used in drug abuse studies. In this task, mice were conditioned to associate one chamber of the CPP apparatus with HFD and a second chamber with an equal calorie amount of RC. After a 12-day conditioning period (6 days on the HFD-paired side, alternating every other day with 6 days on the RC-paired side), mice were permitted free access to both chambers in the absence of
Discussion
The present study identifies a required role for ghrelin in mediating certain hedonic and motivational components of eating. Our results, together with the previous functional magnetic resonance imaging findings of ghrelin-induced increases in the neural response to food pictures within human brain regions implicated in encoding the incentive value of food cues, allow us to add food reward to a growing list of other reward behaviors, including cocaine seeking and alcohol reward, influenced by
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Authors ML and JMZ contributed equally to this work.