Daily Exposure to Sucrose Impairs Subsequent Learning About Food Cues: A Role for Alterations in Ghrelin Signaling and Dopamine D2 Receptors.

ABSTRACT: The prevalence of hedonic foods and associated advertising slogans has contributed to the rise of the obesity epidemic in the modern world. Research has shown that intake of these foods disrupt dopaminergic systems. It may be that a disruption of these circuits produces aberrant learning about food-cue relationships. We found that rodents given 28 days of intermittent access to sucrose exhibited a deficit in the ability to block learning about a stimulus when it is paired in compound with food and another stimulus that has already been established as predictive of the food outcome. This deficit was characterized by an approach to a cue signaling food delivery that is usually blocked by prior learning, an effect dependent on dopaminergic prediction-error signaling in the midbrain. Administe

SUBMITTER: Sharpe MJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4793120 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature