Taffe Michael A
Department of Neuropharmacology, CVN-7, The Scripps Research Institute, 10550 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA.
Physiol Behav. 2004 Mar;81(1):59-70. doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2003.12.011.
Early experimental psychologists made broad use of knowledge that is undoubtedly as old as animal domestication, i.e., that the power of appetitive reinforcement is enhanced by restricting the subjects' access to food. This has led to the nearly universal practice of restricting common laboratory rodent and avian subjects to 85% of free-feeding weight for operant experiments. Appetitive operant procedures in nonhuman primates (NHPs) vary more widely, in part because of the time required for such animals to reach mature weight and greater individual variability in body size compared with inbred laboratory species. In addition, many NHPs will grow obese under true ad-libitum feeding. Therefore, food restriction protocols for monkeys tend to be highly individualized and conducted on the basis of laboratory experience within a given model. The present study was undertaken to determine to what extent short-term, ad-libitum food consumption in rhesus macaques would impair performance on an established neuropsychological testing battery. A second part of the study was to formalize food-restriction parameters to determine what degree of restriction was required to produce consistent behavioral performance. Results show clearly that behavioral performance on a range of tasks is detrimentally affected by short-term, ad-libitum chow feeding, even when the reinforcer is highly preferred or the tasks are well trained. Furthermore, it is shown that maintenance of weekly chow intake in the range of 70-85% of National Research Council recommendations for metabolizable energy is necessary for consistent behavioral responding.
早期的实验心理学家广泛运用了一种无疑与动物驯化一样古老的知识，即通过限制实验对象获取食物来增强食欲强化的力量。这导致了在操作性实验中，将常见的实验室啮齿动物和鸟类实验对象限制在自由进食体重的85%这一几乎普遍的做法。非人灵长类动物（NHPs）的食欲操作性程序差异更大，部分原因是与近亲繁殖的实验室物种相比，这类动物达到成熟体重所需的时间更长，且个体体型差异更大。此外，许多非人灵长类动物在真正自由进食的情况下会变得肥胖。因此，猴子的食物限制方案往往高度个体化，并基于特定模型内的实验室经验来实施。本研究旨在确定恒河猴短期自由进食会在多大程度上损害其在既定神经心理测试组上的表现。该研究的第二部分是规范食物限制参数，以确定需要何种程度的限制才能产生一致的行为表现。结果清楚地表明即使强化物是非常受青睐的，或者任务经过了充分训练，短期自由进食也会对一系列任务的行为表现产生不利影响。此外，研究表明，将每周食物摄入量维持在国家研究委员会代谢能量建议量的70 - 85%范围内，对于产生一致的行为反应是必要的。
