Positive relationship between dietary fat, ethanol intake, triglycerides, and hypothalamic peptides: counteraction by lipid-lowering drugs.

Studies in both humans and animals suggest a positive relationship between the intake of ethanol and intake of fat, which may contribute to alcohol abuse. This relationship may be mediated, in part, by hypothalamic orexigenic peptides such as orexin (OX), which stimulate both consumption of ethanol and fat, and circulating triglycerides (TGs), which stimulate these peptides and promote consummatory behavior. The present study investigated this vicious cycle between ethanol and fat, to further characterize its relation to TGs and to test the effects of lowering TG levels.

Galanin microinjection in the third ventricle increases voluntary ethanol intake.

Background: The neuropeptide galanin increases food intake. Chronic ethanol (EtOH) increases the expression of galanin in the hypothalamus. The research presented here examines the effects of microinjection of galanin in the third ventricle on voluntary alcohol intake.

The paradox of satiation.

Animals behave in bouts, and the process that causes feeding bouts to end is called satiation. Bout size or, in the case of feeding, meal size is the result both of the costs of food resources and the consequences of consuming a particular resource. Meal size increases as a function of increasing resource access cost; in this way, meal size is part of a strategy that economizes on time and energy spent acquiring food resources, thereby making time and effort available for competing activities.

The currency of procurement cost.

As the number of instrtumental responses required to procure access to food is increased, animals decrease the frequency of initiating meals and increase meal size, conserving total intake while limiting the increase in the overall cost of feeding. In two studies, one using wheel turns and one using bar presses as the instrumental response, we asked whether freely feeding laboratory rats measure cost according to the energy or the time they expend. In each study we varied both the price (i.

In the lab with George: 20 years without plumbing or wiring.

George Collier has shown us the importance of non-physiological, economic factors in the control of food intake. Several studies are reviewed demonstrating the effects of cost on rats' diet selection when offered sweet solutions and rat chow. When sucrose solution and chow are both available at no cost, rats take upto 70% of their daily calories from sucrose depending on the concentration.