A 40-year analysis of central neuroanatomical and neurochemical circuits mediating homeostatic intake and hedonic intake and preferences in rodents

This perspective review was written in response to the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the journal, Brain Research, and covers the evolving focus of my laboratory’s work over 40 years in the neurobiological substrates of ingestive behavior in rodents. Following our initial work examining the effects of systemic and ventricular administration of general and selective opioid receptor agonists and antagonists on food intake under spontaneous, deprivation, glucoprivic and hedonic conditions, my laboratory in close collaboration with Drs. Gavril Pasternak and Ying-Xian Pan utilized an antisense oligodoxynucleotide knock-down technique affecting MOR-1, DOR-1, KOR-1 and ORL-1 genes as well as against G-protein subunits to study receptor mediation of opioid receptor agonist-induced feeding as well as feeding following regulatory challenges. Our laboratory employed intracerebral microinjection techniques to map limbic nucleus accumbens and ventral tegmental central brain circuits mediating homeostatic and hedonic feeding responses through the use of selective mu, delta₁, delta₂ and kappa opioid receptor subtype agonists in combination with general and selective opioid, dopamineric, glutamatergic and GABAergic antagonists administered into the same site or the reciprocal site, allowing for the identification of a distributed brain network mediating these ingestive effects. Our laboratory in close collaboration with Dr. Anthony Sclafani then focused on the pharmacological, neuroanatomical and learning mechanisms related to the development of sugar- (sucrose, glucose and fructose) and fat- (corn oil) conditioned flavor preferences (CFP) in rats, and on murine genetic variance in food intake, preferences and the process of appetition.