Ventromedial prefrontal cortex mediates sex differences in persistent cognitive drive for food.

ABSTRACT: Contemporary environments are saturated with food cues that stimulate appetites in the absence of hunger, which leads to maladaptive eating. These settings can induce persistent drive to eat, as learned behaviors can reappear after extinction. Behavioral paradigms of responding renewal provide a valuable framework to study how food cues contribute to the inability to resist palatable foods and change maladaptive eating habits. Using a rat model for this persistent food motivation, we determined sex differences in the causal function for the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) during context-mediated renewal of responding to food cues. Previously, we found behavioral sex differences (only males exhibited renewal) and differential recruitment within the vmPFC (increased Fos induction in m

SUBMITTER: Anderson LC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5797070 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature