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Nucleus accumbens acetylcholine and food intake: Decreased muscarinic tone reduces feeding but not food-seeking

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Abstract

Separate groups of food-deprived rats were given 2 h access to food after receiving bilateral nucleus accumbens infusions of the muscarinic antagonist scopolamine methyl bromide (at 0, 1.0, and 10.0 μg/side), the M2-preferring agonist oxotremorine sesquifumarate (Oxo-S; at 0, 1.0, or 10.0 μg/side) or the M2 antagonist AFDX-116 (at 0, 0.2, or 1.0 μg/side). Injections of scopolamine or Oxo-S, but not AFDX-116, reduced food consumption across the 2 h. These experiments confirm a critical role for Acb acetylcholine in promoting food ingestion, and suggest that decreased acetylcholine tone at post-synaptic muscarinic receptors disrupts normal consummatory behavior.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a Wake Forest University Summer Undergraduate Fellowship (to KB) and the Wake Forest University Department of Psychology. We would like to thank Dr. Federico Bermúdez-Rattoni for advice on preparing AFDX-116, and Dr. Terry D. Blumenthal for his comments on the manuscript. We also thank Dr. Brian A. Baldo and Michelle L. Perry for their valuable intellectual discourse regarding these experiments.

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