Disruption of brain stimulation-induced feeding by dopamine receptor blockade

IT is well established that electrical stimulation of the lateral hypothalamus can be used to elicit a variety of biologically significant behaviour1,2. For many years, this behaviour was usually attributed to the artificial activation of neural systems which control consumatory responses, but this interpretation has been called into question3. The criticism arises in part from behavioural experiments in which stimulation-induced feeding and drinking were shown to differ from their natural counterparts in a number of important respects4,5, and also from neuro-pharmacological studies (ref. 6 and A.G.P. and H. C. Fibiger, unpublished) showing that food deprivation and brain stimulation-induced feeding or drinking were differentially affected by destruction of catecholamine (CA) systems in the brain. These latter results clearly implicated brain CAs in a stimulation-induced behaviour and as such emphasise the parallels between electrically-induced behaviour and stereotypies which accompany high doses of amphetamine7.