Appetitive behavior

The Lorenz-Craig model Appetitive behavior - releasing stimulus situation - consummatory act was later modified by N. Tinbergens hierarchy model of appetite behaviors (for details see I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1975, 1987). 

More recently, a growing understanding of neurotransmitter modulation of appetitive behaviors has pointed to some disturbance of neurotransmitter function as the cause of AN and/or BN (Morley and Blundell, 1988 Fava et ah, 1989). It is possible that disturbances of brain neuropeptides and/or monoamines could contribute to other symptoms and behaviors, such as neuroendocrine or autonomic abnormalities, or alterations of mood and behavior in people with AN or BN. It is important to emphasize that monoamine or neuropeptide disturbances could be a consequence of dietary abnormalities, or premorbid traits that contribute to a vulnerability to develop AN or BN. One way to tease apart cause and effect is to study people with AN or BN at various stages in their illness—that is, while symptomatic and after recovery. 

Both the response-energizing and the preparatory roles of DA can be regarded as aspects of an incentive view of the function of DA. Thus, activation of DA transmission by incentive stimuli predictive of reward availability might facilitate the sustained emission of instrumental responses and of appetitive behaviors of search and approach. 

Gambarana C, Masi F, Leggio B, Grappi S, Nanni G, Scheggi S, De Montis MG, Tagliamonte A (2003) Acquisition of a palatable-food-sustained appetitive behavior in satiated rats is dependent on the dopaminergic response to this food in limbic areas. Neuroscience 727(1) 179—187. 

Hitchcott PK, Phillips GD (1998) Double dissociation of the behavioral effects of R(-)7-OH-DPAT infusions in the central and basolateral amygdala nuclei upon Pavlovian and instrumental conditioned appetitive behaviors. Psychopharmacology 740 458-469. 

Dimitropoulos, A., I. D. Feurer, E. Roof, W. Stone, M. G. Butler, J. Sutcliffe, et al. (2000). Appetitive behavior, compulsivity, and neurochemistry in Prader-Willi syndrome. Ment Retard Dev Disabil Res Rev 6(2) 125-30. 

Peptide Anorectics - The role of cholecystokinin-octapeptide (CCK-8) in the control of appetitive behavior has been reviewed recently and its clinical efficacy has been demonstrated in lean and obese subjects. Ceruletide, which is structurally related to CCK-8, decreases solid food intake and subjective hunger ratings in patients. A smaller fragment of cholecystokinin, CCK-4 inhibits food intake in rats at doses approximately 10-fold greater than those needed to produce the same effect with CCK-8. 

Antidepressants work by balancing neurotransmitter activity in the brain. As we talked about earlier, neurotransmitters are the chemical messengers that pass messages between neurons, a type of brain cell. These messages relay all kinds of information about mood, emotions, appetite, behavior, sensations, and even body temperature, and they pass from one neuron to the next. 

Garbe, C.M., Kemble, E.D., Rawleigh, J.M. 1993. Novel odors evoke risk assessment and suppress appetitive behaviors in mice. 1993. Aggress. Behav., 19,447—454. 

THE CRAIG-LORENZ-TINBERGEN CONCEPTUALIZATION OF CONSUMMATORY AND APPETITIVE BEHAVIORS... 

An important part of my argument is that some aspects of orientation and investigation are innate and elicited rather than learned and emitted. The innate components are not under voluntary control and are not as variable in intensity, frequency, or duration as the emitted components. The ethological tradition has, however, lumped all forms of searching and exploration into the category of appetitive behavior ... 

Contrary to the consummatory action, appetitive behavior is not characterized by a stereotyped motor pattern, but rather by (1) its variability and plasticity and (2) its purposiveness.. . ... 

The consummatory act is relatively simple, at its most complex, it is a chain of reactions, each of which may be a simultaneous combination of a taxis and a fixed pattern. But appetitive behavior is a true purposive activity, offering all the problems of plasticity, adaptiveness, and of complex integration that baffle the scientist in his study of behavior as a whole. Appetitive behavior is a conglomerate of many elements of very different order, of reflexes, of simple patterns like locomotion, of conditioned reactions, of insight behavior, and so on. (Tinbergen, 1951, pp. 105-106)... 

Lorenz (1981) recognized that some appetitive behaviors are FAPs, endogenously released and terminated upon detection of the key stimulus for the consummatory act that is the objective of the search. But, he did not develop the theoretical implications of this idea. Instead we must turn to the Russian physiologists who have spent 50 years studying orienting reflexes (Sokolov, 1963 Voronin et al., 1965, see also Berlyne, 1960). 

Searching or appetitive strategy is used here to delineate behavior patterns that are characterized generally by increased locomotion and lowered thresholds to stimuli inducing the next behavior, in this case orientation toward a chemical. Appetitive behavior is thus defined teleologically, and as a consequence currently is avoided by most behaviorists. But it has heuristic value and I do not know of a suitable, non-teleological replacement term. 

Hartmann AM, Burleson LE, Holmes AK, Geist CR. Effects of chronic kombucha ingestion on open-field behaviors, longevity, appetitive behaviors, and organs in c57-bl/6 mice a pilot study. Nutrition 2000 16 755-761. 

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