BEHAVIORAL BIOLOGY 23, 500--508 (1978) Appetitive Determinants of Self-Stimulation

Previous reports have pointed to a biologically meaningful relationship between brain-stimulated reward and appetitive motivation such as feeding. The present experiments further examined this relationship in chronically self-stimulating Sprague-Dawley rats. In Expt 1 restriction of ad libitum food produced a sub-sequent increase in self-stimulation i the substantia nigra. In Expt 2 restriction of ad libitum self-stimulation, from the same sites, produced a subsequent gain in body weight. In Expt 3 restriction of ad libitum self-stimulation produced sub-sequent increases in responding for stimulation. Soon after the initial discovery of self-stimulation of the brain (ICS; Olds and Milner, 1954) the results of several experiments suggested that the same central nervous system (CNS) circuits subserving electrically elicited reward might also be involved in biological reinforcement. Brady and co-workers (1957) noted increases in self-stimulation rates sub-sequent o food and water deprivation in rats and cats. This finding was independently confirmed by both Olds (1958) and Hodos and Valenstei