Adolescent female rats recovered from the activity-based anorexia display blunted hedonic responding.

Objective: As patients with anorexia nervosa tend to "like" palatable tastants less than controls, we set out to model this preclinically by using the taste reactivity test (TRT) to assess hedonic state in rats following weight restoration from a bout of activity-based anorexia (ABA).

Method: Female rats (n = 31) were surgically implanted with an intraoral catheter, which allowed experimenters to assess baseline TRT to six tastants. Following baseline TRT, animals were either exposed to the activity-based anorexia condition (ABA; 1.