Ghrelin's effects on food motivation in rats are not limited to palatable foods

Abstract

The "hunger" hormone, ghrelin, is powerfully orexigenic. Even in the absence of hunger, ghrelin delivery to rats increases consumption of chow as well as palatable foods and increases motivated behaviour for palatable food rewards. Inspired by the finding that ghrelin increases the selection of chow in rats offered a choice diet (lard, sucrose or chow) and even in rats bingeing on a high fat diet, we sought to explore whether ghrelin's effects on motivation extend to regular chow. Rats were conditioned to lever press for either chow or sucrose pellets in a progressive ratio (PR) operant conditioning task. The effect of acute intracerebroventricular delivery of ghrelin on both chow and sucrose self‐administration was determined and compared to overnight fasting (when endogenous ghrelin levels are elevated). We found that ghrelin similarly increased motivated behaviour for chow and sucrose pellets. The effect of fasting on motivated behaviour for both food pellets was comparable in magnitude to that induced by ghrelin, albeit with an earlier ceiling effect during the PR session. Devaluation experiments (in which rats are offered either food reinforcer in excess prior to PR testing) did not support the hypothesis that sucrose pellets would be more difficult to devalue (due to their higher incentive value) than chow pellets. When exchanging the rats' respective pellets during a PR session, chow‐conditioned rats were more motivated for sucrose pellets than for chow pellets; however, sucrose‐conditioned rats were similarly motivated for chow pellets as for sucrose pellets. Thus, using sucrose as a reward may increase the motivation even for less palatable foods. We conclude that the impact of ghrelin on food motivated behaviour in fed rats is not limited to palatable foods but extends to regular chow and also that the magnitude of the effect is considerable when compared to that of an overnight fast.

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