A single incidental dark pulse during daytime attenuated food anticipatory behavior

ABSTRACT

Using an open-source operant feeding device (FED3), we measured food-seeking nose poking behavior in mice. When the mice were exposed to 4 h restricted feeding at night, all mice exhibited robust food anticipatory nose poking starting ~4 h before scheduled mealtime. When the light-dark cycle was advanced by 6 h, mice exhibited two distinct bouts of anticipatory poking, one corresponding to actual mealtime which continued at the same time of day, and one corresponding to predicted mealtime which shifted parallel with the light-dark cycle. Likewise, two similar bouts of food-seeking behavior appeared when the light-dark cycle was delayed for 9 h. These data suggest that food anticipatory behavior is encoded to a circadian oscillator that entrains to the light-dark cycle. Two weeks after advancing the light-dark cycle, mice incidentally received a 3.5 h dark pulse in the middle of the day. This single dark pulse had a negligible effect on running wheel behavior but caused a temporary attenuation of both food anticipatory poking and pellet intake. These results suggest that the circadian oscillator controlling food anticipatory poking is sensitive to light disruption and that proper food anticipation is critical for sufficient food intake during temporally restricted feeding.

KEYWORDS:

• Circadian rhythm
• extra-SCN pacemaker
• food anticipation
• food seeking behavior
• light entrainment
• non-canonical circadian oscillator
• operant
• reward

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health under R01NS114527 and the National Science Foundation under IOS-1931115 awarded to S.Y.

Authors contribution

Conception and design – K.B., S.K.T.T., and S.Y.; analysis and interpretation of the data – K.B., S.K.T.T., M.S., D.E.E., S.F. and S.Y.; drafting the paper – S.K.T.T., M.S., S.F., and S.Y.; final approval of the version to be published – S.Y.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data reported in this paper is available upon request.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/19420889.2024.2341050

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health R01NS114527 and the National Science Foundation IOS-1931115 awarded to SY.