(A) Schematic of conditioned appetite assay. Test pellets and home cage chow are similar in energy density but different in shape, size, and texture. Test pellets were either included in home cage or not, as indicated. (B–C) Average 60 min food intake of conditioned appetitive experiments. (B) Food intake of AgRP-ChR2 mice without access to test pellets in homecage (red n = 6) and with access to test pellets in homecage (black n = 5), and WT mice without access to test pellets in homecage (grey n = 3) through consecutive trials. Blue boxes indicate trials with 60 min prestimulation (trials 3,5,7), whereas in white trials animals were subjected to mock stimulation (trials 1,2,4,6,8). (C) Comparison among pre-conditioning, post-conditioning and extinction trials of AgRP-ChR2 mice with (black n = 5) or without (red n = 6) access to test pellets in homecage. Trial 1 and 2 are considered pre-conditioning, trial 4 and 6 are considered post-conditioning and trial 8 is considered extinction. (D) Conditioned flavor preference experiment. (E) Change of preference to conditioned flavor before and after 4 repeats of prestimulation conditioning assay (n = 8). Asterisks on top of brackets indicate significance levels for comparisons with the respective protocols, using one-way-ANOVA with Holm-Sidak’s correction for multiple comparisons (****p≤0.0001, ***0.0001<p≤0.001, **0.001<p≤0.01, *0.01<p≤0.05, ns p>0.05).
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.18640.008