Abstract
Food-deprivation-induced locomotor arousal was investigated in mice using a daily 2-h shuttle cage test. In Experiment 1, deprived mice demonstrated enhanced locomotor activity compared to ad-lib controls. The pattern of the activity over 15-min intervals showed that the locomotor arousal was partly due to an attenuation of the normal within-session activity decrease characteristic of controls. This finding suggests some inhibition of habituation processes as a result of food deprivation. The second experiment indicated an important role for norepinephrine systems in the mediation of the starvation-induced arousal, as pretreatment with the dopamine-β-hydroxylase inhibitor FLA-63 blocked locomotor arousal in food-deprived mice.
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This research was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD-09145-01) to Z. Michael Nagy. The authors gratefully acknowledge the generous donation of FLA-63 by Astra Pharmaceuticals.
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Murphy, J.M., Nagy, Z.M. FLA-63 blocks food-deprivation-induced behavioral arousal in the mouse. Psychobiology 7, 407–411 (1979). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03326666
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03326666