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The effects of aversive levels of white noise on consummatory behavior
Abstract
The present study was designed to investigate the effects of aversive levels of white noise on consummatory behavior. Three levels of sound were chosen for study (90, 100, and 110 dB). The results showed that Ss in the sound treatment conditions consumed significantly greater quantities of food on the second sound treatment day than did Ss in the no-sound control condition. In addition, there were no systematic differences in consummatory behavior among the three treatment conditions.
... Pogląd ten wspierają wyniki badań przeprowadzonych na szczurach. Poddanie szczurów oddziaływaniu silnych stresorów, jak intensywny hałas [1] czy silny szok elektryczny [47], spowodowało zmniejszenie ilości spożywanego pokarmu, natomiast niski i umiarkowany hałas oraz niskie natężenie prądu przyczyniło się do zwiększenia konsumpcji oraz tempa jedzenia [26,43]. ...
... Pogląd ten wspierają wyniki badań przeprowadzonych na szczurach. Poddanie szczurów oddziaływaniu silnych stresorów, jak intensywny hałas [1] czy silny szok elektryczny [47], spowodowało zmniejszenie ilości spożywanego pokarmu, natomiast niski i umiarkowany hałas oraz niskie natężenie prądu przyczyniło się do zwiększenia konsumpcji oraz tempa jedzenia [26,43]. ...
... Rats that are crowded or experience changes in their housing environment decrease food consumption (Brown & Grunberg, 1995; O'Conner & Eikelboom, 2000). Electric shock and restraint stress decrease food consumption (Rickards, Job, & Boakes, 1997; Marti, Marti, & Armario, 1994; Zylan & Brown, 1996); exposure to repeated cold stress increases feeding (Kawanishi, Fukuda, Tamura, Nishijo, & Ono,1997); noise stressors increase (Rasbury & Shemberg, 1971; Wilson & Cantor, 1986) and decrease feeding (Krebs, Macht, Weyers, Weijers, & Janke, 1996). Pijlman, Wolterink, and Van Ree (2003) suggest that stress may influence the sensitivity of subjects to rewarding stimuli. ...
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... When subjected to stressful noise, one study showed that only one third of rats showed reduced food intake (Macht, Krebs, Weyers & Janke, 2001), and another showed reduced eating duration and increased eating speed and latency to begin eating (Krebs, Macht, Weyers, Weijers & Janke, 1996). Increased food intake in response to stressful noise has been reported (Rasbury & Shemberg, 1971; Wilson & Cantor, 1986). Female rats exposed to maternal separation showed increased eating (Iwasaki, Inoue, Kiriike & Hikiji, 2000) as well as less body weight but increased consumption in more palatable food (McIntosh, Anisman & Merali, 1999). ...
Eating disorders are serious psychological disorders associated with debilitating lifestyle, multiple health problems and high rates of suicidality and mortality. Despite extensive research, the aetiology of eating disorders still remains unclear. Amongst the identified risk factors for eating disorders, stress has been frequently studied. The purpose of the present study was to explore the possibility that tail-pinch administered to rats could provide an animal model of stress-induced eating disturbances in humans, and whether environmental enrichment might ameliorate the effects of stress. In Experiment 1, we compared eating behaviours of rats that were reared in either enriched or standard environments and later exposed to tail-pinch and allowed to eat when food deprived. The study showed that a single exposure to tail-pinch induced eating disturbances in most of the rats. When rats were not food deprived, but were conditioned to eating when placed in test chamber, tail-pinch suppressed eating in all rats, but significantly more for rats reared under standard than in enriched conditions. Experiment 2 used a between-subjects design in which rats were reared in either a standard or enriched environment, and were either exposed to tail-pinch or not exposed during sessions in which they were not food deprived and allowed to eat. Tail-pinch suppressed the food intake of rats reared in enriched but not standard environments. Although this finding appeared to contradict results of Experiment 1, analysis of body weight revealed that exposure to tail pinch suppressed increases in weight gain across sessions more for rats reared in standard than enriched environments. The suppression of food intake during test sessions for enriched but not standard rats exposed to tail-pinch was attributed to differences in contextual conditioning and discrimination of the test chamber from home cages. Overall, results of the present study suggest that rats reared in enriched environments were more resilient to the effects of tail-pinch as a stressor. Implications of these findings for the understanding of human eating disorders are discussed.
... Animal studies point to a role of intensity for the direction of effects of emotional stress on food intake. Rats decrease food intake during intense noise (Alario, Gamallo, Beato, & Trancho, 1987; Pare´,Pare´, 1964), in response to intense electric shock (Strongman, 1965; Weiss, 1968), and during chronic stress (Sampson, Muscat, Philips, & Willner, 1992; Willner, Muscat, & Papp, 1992), but increase food intake or eating speed in response to low or moderate noise and electric shock (Krebs et al., 1996; Kupferman, 1964; Rasbury & Shemberg, 1971; Sterritt, 1962 Sterritt, , 1965 Sterritt & Shemberg, 1963; Strongman, Coles, Remington, & Wookey, 1970; Ullman, 1951 Ullman, , 1952). Results of a human study correspond to these data (Mehrabian, 1980). ...
Despite the importance of affective processes in eating behaviour, it remains difficult to predict how emotions affect eating. Emphasizing individual differences, previous research did not pay full attention to the twofold variability of emotion-induced changes of eating (variability across both individuals and emotions). By contrast, the present paper takes into account both individual characteristics and emotion features, and specifies five classes of emotion-induced changes of eating: (1) emotional control of food choice, (2) emotional suppression of food intake, (3) impairment of cognitive eating controls, (4) eating to regulate emotions, and (5) emotion-congruent modulation of eating. These classes are distinguished by antecedent conditions, eating responses and mediating mechanisms. They point to basic functional principles underlying the relations between emotions and biologically based motives: interference, concomitance and regulation. Thus, emotion-induced changes of eating can be a result of interference of eating by emotions, a by-product of emotions, and a consequence of regulatory processes (i.e., emotions may regulate eating, and eating may regulate emotions).
Noise has become inexorable stress due to the increase in urbanization, automobile usage, Noise based occupation, and lifestyle modifications such as recreation in day to day life of an individual. Noise not only affects the auditory system but can also debilitate other non-auditory systems as evidenced in animal and human models. Various studies have reported that noise has the potential to tarnish the Central Nervous System in heterogeneous ways. This article reviews the researches on Noise and Brain with the spotlight on the effect of noise on health that includes a) noise-induced impaired cognition on neurobehaviour, b) brain areas which are predominantly affected by the noise-induced oxidative stress, c) alteration of the neurotransmitter level in various brain regions, d) alteration of the molecular mechanism induced by noise stress on brain cellular level, e) Noise-induced deterioration of the morphological structures of brain and f) epigenetic modification by noise on brain.
Forming a background to this research are the well-established links between stress and disease on the one hand, and dietary composition and disease on the other. Associations between stressful life events and weight gain, and between perceived stress and serum cholesterol, have been observed in the general population. In addition, studies of obese and dieting populations have revealed that the eating behaviour of some individuals is affected by stress. This raises the possibility that one of the mechanisms through which stress might influence health is via an effect on food intake. Stress is widely believed to influence eating behaviour, but the evidence derives largely from clinical observation and anecdotal report. In the small number of studies that have been carried out in this area, the results have been inconclusive. These converging lines of evidence suggest that the influence of stress on food intake and, more specifically, food choice, is well worth studying. A link between stress and fat intake, for example, would be of considerable importance both for understanding the psychobiology of food intake, and for interventions to reduce the prevalence of diseases of Western society such as obesity, diabetes and coronary heart disease. This research aimed to investigate the prevalence and nature of stress-induced changes in eating within the general population, using a variety of methodologies. An initial questionnaire study examined the self reported prevalence of stress induced changes in a population of undergraduate students, looking at the effect of stress on overall intake and also changes in preference for specific foods. It also investigated the possibility that individuals prone to stress-induced changes in eating may be defined by parameters such as gender or dieting status. Results indicated that the majority of the sample believed their eating to be influenced in some way by stress, with reports of increased eating and decreased eating occurring with approximately equal frequencies, although dieters were more likely to report eating more when stressed. Foods reportedly preferred during stress were predominantly snack foods, this was in agreement with reported increases in snacking with stress among the majority of respondents, and was true of hyperphagics and hypophagics alike. Thus the 'dietary role' of a food appeared to be the dominant influence over stress-induced preference in this sample. The stress-eating relationship was examined in the laboratory by manipulating stress and assessing food intake and selection during a single meal. Increased intake of sweet, fatty foods was seen by stressed subjects who were emotional eaters. This group also ate a meal that was highly energy dense compared with unstressed emotional eaters. A longitudinal study of 6 months' duration investigated the stress-eating relationship in the 'real world' environment, by assessing dietary change in department store workers over periods of varying work load. The findings provided tentative support for a general hyperphagic effect of work stress; dietary restraint and emotional eating were not found to influence the stress-eating relationship in this case. Finally structured interviews in a small sample of self-identified 'stress-eaters' provided descriptive data on the nature of the stress-eating relationship. Interviewees consistently referred to their stress-eating tendencies as providing some sort of emotional nourishment rather than fulfilling any increased physiological need for food. The findings from this thesis suggest that during certain types of stress, many individuals are prone to increased snack consumption. Implications are discussed.
A dose-response analysis of systemic injections of ethanol on appetitive behaviors indicated that low doses facilitated responding in food-motivated fixed ratio and DRL tasks without parallel increases in food consumption or general activity. Higher doses of ethanol produced the expected depression of all behaviors examined. The results were discussed in terms of the possible differential sensitivity of different behavioral processes and/or brain areas to the effects of the drug.
The present experiment examined the effects of environmental enrichment on behavioral measures of locomotor activity, stress, and health in rats. Six measures (i.e., Open Field, Elevated Plus Maze, Light/Dark Box, Plasma Corticosterone, Food Consumption, and Body Weight) were used to examine the effects of enrichment and stress on 48 male, adolescent Sprague-Dawley rats that were placed in an enriched or non-enriched environment for a total of 24 days. Compared with rats housed in non-enriched environments, rats that were housed in enriched environments showed the following: (1) decreased activity and increased habituation in a novel environment; (2) ate less food and had less body weight gain (6% on average). The results regarding stress responses were inconclusive. These findings and future research investigating the effect of environmental enrichment to slow the rate of weight gain are discussed.
Feeding is critical for survival. Yet, patients with chronic pain often lose their appetite and eat less. We previously showed that ad libitum fed male rats continue to feed rather than withdraw from a brief noxious stimulus. This study examined the effects of a sustained noxious stimulus on feeding by testing ad libitum fed male rats for five eating behaviors--latency to eat, time taken to eat each chip, pauses and scanning during eating, and the number of chocolate chips eaten--during the hour following a sham injection or an injection of a low (0.5%) or moderate (1.5%) dose of formalin into the hind paw. Sham-injected rats showed no pain-related behaviors, rats injected with 0.5% formalin showed very few pain-related behaviors, and rats injected with 1.5% formalin showed favoring, lifting and licking of the injured paw with a characteristic biphasic time course. Besides taking less time to commence eating during the first phase of formalin pain, rats injected with either dose of formalin did not differ from sham-injected rats on any of the other eating measures. Rats injected with 0.5% formalin showed no pain behaviors during eating, whereas those given 1.5% formalin typically ate while not exhibiting any pain behaviors but occasionally ate while favoring the paw, rarely while lifting the paw, and never while licking the paw. These results show that eating is a protected activity even in the presence of persistent pain in male rats.
Eating and other behaviors were measured in 36 food-deprived rats on 15 consecutive days during 20 min test sessions. During training sessions 1 to 5 all animals were habituated to the test boxes with white noise of 55 dB intensity. For sessions 6 to 10 noise intensity was increased to 95 dB for the experimental rats and to 60 dB for the control rats. The food intake of experimental rats was lower for stress session 1. The duration of eating behavior was lower, and durations of exploring, grooming and resting behaviors were higher for all stress sessions for rats exposed to 95 dB white noise. Speed of eating behavior was higher for all stress sessions in the experimental group. Defecation rate of the experimental rats was higher for all stress sessions. On post-stress sessions 11 to 15 animals were again tested under the stimulus conditions of the training period (55 dB). No significant effects were observed for this period. The results are discussed with respect to models of "stress-induced" eating and behavioral ecology.
The experiments explored the effects on feeding when rats were moved between individual and paired housing. In Experiment 1, rats moved to paired housing showed a 3-day suppression in feeding (initially 23%) compared to chronically individual- or pair-housed rats. In Experiment 2, half of the rats from the two control groups of Experiment 1 were moved between individual and paired housing on alternate days. Only the rats moved to paired housing showed a feeding suppression (initially 40%), but the nature of the suppression differed from Experiment 1: it appeared that only one rat of each pair showed a feeding suppression. Experiment 3 examined simultaneous introduction of running wheels and moves to paired housing. The feeding suppression induced by the move to paired housing was more immediate and shorter lived than the wheel-induced suppression. Unlike wheel access, paired housing produced only a temporary suppression of body weight. These experiments suggest that the relatively simple manipulation of moving rats from individual to paired housing results in a temporary stress-induced decrease in feeding.
Onset or termination of an intense white noise was made contingent upon the occurrence of certain responses in the rat's repertory in order to determine the extent to which the probabilities of these responses can be reduced by noise onset (punishment training) and increased by noise termination (escape training). Comparison with the appropriate controls indicated that rearing was affected by escape training but not punishment, certain exploratory responses were affected by both kinds of training, and that grooming was affected by neither. The results are interpreted in terms of response competition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Relative aversiveness of sound and shock was assessed in a spatial preference situation using 8 levels of white noise (45-115 db. in 10-db steps) as standard stimuli. Each standard level was paired with 4 or 5 comparison shock intensities, and proportion of time spent on noise and shock sides of the cage was recorded. Stimuli were defined as equally aversive when best-fitting straight lines indicated equal preference for noise and shock. Aversiveness of shock in volts increased linearly as a function of noise in decibels, and the maximum, usable, nondamaging level of noise was found to be far less aversive than shock intensities typically used in psychological research.
Wistar and Long-Evans rats were given brief shocks while eating. No level of shock intensity led to net overeating by comparison to unshocked controls, although several shock intensities led to reliable overeating during shock. Shock had somewhat less effect on eating in Wistars than in Long-Evans rats. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Twenty-six rats were used to study the development of stable conditioned responding to terminate white noise (100 or 105 db) in a tilt cage apparatus. Preliminary work, with one end of the cage consistently associated with silence, demonstrated stability at a high level of cumulative noise-off time per session. Time spent at the noise-off cage end was unaffected by lay-off and showed adaptation to reversal of the cage end functions. Variability in reversal acquisition, insensitivity to stimulus intensity changes and persistence in remaining at one end of the cage in the absence of noise-termination contingencies indicated the need for more precise behavioral control. A schedule programming several reversals of the no-noise end at variable intervals within each session was developed. Performance on the latter schedule was characterized by stability of high noise-off times and also proved more sensitive than the preliminary method to stimulus intensity changes (55, 70, 100 db) as measured by both cumulated noise-off time and cage crossing rates. The ease of training combined with sensitivity to stimulus change and the lack of highly specific motor response requirements make this technique promising for use with animals potentially debilitated by drugs or surgical after-effects.