Santa Lucia Foundation, European Centre for Brain Research (CERC), Rome, Italy.
Appetite. 2010 Feb;54(1):237-40. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2009.12.008. Epub 2009 Dec 16.
A major problem in the dietary treatment of disorders associated with excessive eating, such as obesity, is the high rate of relapse into maladaptive eating habits after withdrawal from consumption of palatable, energy-dense food. As olfaction has a major role in appetite and eating behavior, in this study we used a reinstatement model based on conditioned place preference to investigate the ability of olfactory priming to reinstate extinguished chocolate-induced conditioned place preference in sated mice. We found that olfactory priming, which was ineffective in inducing conditioned place preference in the control group, reactivated place preference following the extinction procedure in the experimental group. These results extend previous reports of the reinstatement of food seeking induced by pellet priming and, for the first time, show the possibility of using olfactory priming in an animal model of relapse. In light of the major role of olfactory inputs in appetite and of cues in relapse, the present results indicate that smell is an important factor to consider in the treatment of eating disorders.
在饮食治疗与过度进食相关的疾病（如肥胖症）时，一个主要的问题是，在停止食用美味、高热量的食物后，人们很容易重新养成不良的饮食习惯，导致疾病复发。由于嗅觉在食欲和进食行为中起着重要作用，在这项研究中，我们使用基于条件位置偏好的复燃模型，来研究嗅觉刺激是否能重新激活已被消耗的巧克力诱导的条件位置偏好。我们发现，嗅觉刺激在对照组中不能引起条件位置偏好，但在实验组的消退程序后，它能重新激活对位置的偏好。这些结果扩展了以前关于食物寻求的复燃的研究报告，并且首次表明，在动物模型中，使用嗅觉刺激来治疗疾病复发是有可能的。鉴于嗅觉输入在食欲中的重要作用以及线索在复发中的作用，这些结果表明，气味是治疗进食障碍时需要考虑的一个重要因素。
