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Early life experience alters behavioral responses to sweet food and accumbal dopamine metabolism
Author(s) -
Silveira P.P.,
Portella A.K.,
Assis S.A.C.N.,
Nieto F.B.,
Diehl L.A.,
Crema L.M.,
Peres W.,
Costa G.,
Scorza C.,
Quillfeldt J.A.,
Lucion A.B.,
Dalmaz C.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
international journal of developmental neuroscience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.761
H-Index - 88
eISSN - 1873-474X
pISSN - 0736-5748
DOI - 10.1016/j.ijdevneu.2009.08.018
Subject(s) - dopamine , nucleus accumbens , ingestion , dopaminergic , incentive salience , psychology , medicine , endocrinology , palatability , catecholamine , neuroscience , chemistry , food science
Neonatal handling in rats persistently alters behavioral parameters and responses to stress. Such animals eat more sweet food in adult life, without alterations in lab chow ingestion. Here, we show that neonatally handled rats display greater incentive salience to a sweet reward in a runway test; however they are less prone to conditioned place preference and show less positive hedonic reactions to sweet food. When injected with methylphenidate (a dopamine mimetic agent), non‐handled rats increase their sweet food ingestion in the fasted state, while neonatally handled rats do not respond. We did not observe any differences regarding baseline general ambulatory activity between the groups. A lower dopamine metabolism in the nucleus accumbens was observed in handled animals, without differences in norepinephrine content. We suggest that early handling leads to a particular response to positive reinforcers such as palatable food, in a very peculiar fashion of higher ingestion but lower hedonic impact, as well as higher incentive salience, but diminished dopaminergic metabolism in the nucleus accumbens.