Electrical stimulation of the insular cortex induces flavor-preferences in rats.
The present study examined the role of the Insular cortex (IC) in flavor-guided behavior. For that purpose, a flavored stimulus was paired with delayed electrical stimulation of this region. In addition, a standard operant task explored the involvement of the IC in a prefrontal self-stimulation reward-circuit. The results showed strong preferences for the flavored stimulus previously paired to the Insular stimulation, in a discriminative free choice test. However, the operant task revealed a failure to induce IC self-stimulation, suggesting that flavor preferences elicited by electrical stimulation of the IC are not due to activation of the prefrontal-stimulation reward circuit. These results are discussed in terms of the Insular Cortex as critical in processing visceral stimulus, hedonic valence and/or food-reward incentive learning.
Departamento de Psicología Experimental y Psicobiología, Universidad de Almería, 04120, Almería, Spain. icubero@filabres.ualm.es
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D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D004558:Electric Stimulation; D005421:Flavoring Agents; D005518:Food Preferences / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D012653:Self Stimulation / Q000502:physiology; D013649:Taste / Q000502:physiology*
D005421:Flavoring Agents