Food Anticipatory Activity Behavior of Mice across a Wide Range of Circadian and Non-Circadian Intervals
Abstract
When rodents are fed in a limited amount during the daytime, they rapidly redistribute some of their nocturnal activity to the time preceding the delivery of food. In rats, anticipation of a daily meal has been interpreted as a circadian rhythm controlled by a food-entrained oscillator (FEO) with circadian limits to entrainment. Lesion experiments place this FEO outside of the light-entrainable circadian pacemaker in the suprachiasmatic nucleus. Mice also anticipate a fixed daily meal, but circadian limits to entrainment and anticipation of more than 2 daily meals, have not been assessed. We used a video-based behavior recognition system to quantify food anticipatory activity in mice receiving 2, 3, or 6 daily meals at intervals of 12, 8, or 4-hours (h). Individual mice were able to anticipate as many as 4 of 6 daily meals, and anticipation persisted during meal omission tests. On the 6 meal schedule, pre-prandial activity and body temperature were poorly correlated, suggesting independent regulation. Mice showed a limited ability to anticipate an 18 h feeding schedule. Finally, mice showed concurrent circadian and sub-hourly anticipation when provided with 6 small meals, at 30 minute intervals, at a fixed time of day. These results indicate that mice can anticipate feeding opportunities at a fixed time of day across a wide range of intervals not previously associated with anticipatory behavior in studies of rats. The methods described here can be exploited to determine the extent to which timing of different intervals in mice relies on common or distinct neural and molecular mechanisms.
Additional Information
© 2012 Luby et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Received: March 7, 2012; Accepted: May 1, 2012; Published: May 25, 2012. We thank Mike Walsh for design and construction of automatic feeders. We also thank Drs. Christof Koch, David Anderson, and Henry Lester for their guidance and support. Author Contributions: Conceived and designed the experiments: MDL CTH SAS CMG REM ADS. Performed the experiments: MDL CTH SAS CMG ADS. Analyzed the data: MDL CTH SAS CMG REM ODK ADS. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: ODK. Wrote the paper: REM ADS. Funding: These studies were funded by grants to ADS from the Ellison Medical Foundation, the Klarman Family Foundation Program in Eating Disorders, and the Broad Fellows in Brain Circuitry Program at Caltech. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Attached Files
Published - Luby2012p18880PLoS_ONE.pdf
Supplemental Material - journal.pone.0037992.s001.pdf
Supplemental Material - journal.pone.0037992.s002.pdf
Supplemental Material - journal.pone.0037992.s003.pdf
Supplemental Material - journal.pone.0037992.s004.pdf
Supplemental Material - journal.pone.0037992.s005.pdf
Supplemental Material - journal.pone.0037992.s006.pdf
Supplemental Material - journal.pone.0037992.s007.pdf
Supplemental Material - journal.pone.0037992.s008.pdf
Supplemental Material - journal.pone.0037992.s009.pdf
Supplemental Material - journal.pone.0037992.s010.pdf
Supplemental Material - journal.pone.0037992.s011.pdf
Supplemental Material - journal.pone.0037992.s012.pdf
Supplemental Material - journal.pone.0037992.s013.pdf
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Additional details
- PMCID
- PMC3360658
- Eprint ID
- 32652
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20120723-130440443
- Ellison Medical Foundation
- Klarman Family Foundation
- Caltech Broad Fellows in Brain Circuitry Program
- Created
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2012-07-23Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field