ArticleHormones and behavior2019
Palatable food reduces anxiety-like behaviors and HPA axis responses to stress in female rats in an estrous-cycle specific manner.
Article in Hormones and behavior, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 28 citations in OpenAlex.
- High-fat diet exposure, internal state, and reward value influence decision making during motivational conflict.Neurobiology of stress · 2026Article
- Limited sucrose intake produces subregion-specific remodeling of perineuronal nets in the medial prefrontal cortex.Brain structure & function · 2026Article
- Neural mechanisms linking Western diet consumption and cognitive impairment: a role for the vagus nerve.Clinical science (London, England : 1979) · 2026Review
- Sex-specific organization and synaptic signaling in prefrontal-hypothalamic circuitry.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- A larger amount of palatable food is needed to provide stress relief during Western diet-induced obesity.Physiology & behavior · 2026Article
- Involvement of the central amygdaloid nucleus in the regulation of sex differences in the stress relief response in mice.Biology of sex differences · 2026Article
- Article
- Sex- and estrous-related response patterns for alcohol depend critically on the level of compulsion-like challenge.Progress in neuro-psychopharmacology & biological psychiatry · 2024Article
- Microbiota-gut-brain axis in binge-eating disorder: Towards microbiome-based therapies.Neuroscience applied · 2024Review
- A neuronal coping mechanism linking stress-induced anxiety to motivation for reward.Science advances · 2023Article
- Dietary counselling plus omega-3 supplementation in the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder: protocol for a randomized wait-list controlled pilot trial (the "EASe-GAD Trial").Pilot and feasibility studies · 2023Article
- Western diet-induced obesity interferes with the HPA axis-blunting effects of palatable food in male rats.Physiology & behavior · 2023Article
- A High-Sugar Diet Consumption, Metabolism and Health Impacts with a Focus on the Development of Substance Use Disorder: A Narrative Review.Nutrients · 2022Review
- Global Proteome Profiling of the Temporal Cortex of Female Rats Exposed to Chronic Stress and the Western Diet.Nutrients · 2022Article
- Intergenerational protein deficiency and adolescent reproductive function of subsequent female generations (FCurrent research in physiology · 2022Article
- Limited cheese intake reduces HPA axis and behavioral stress responses in male rats.Physiology & behavior · 2021Article
- Palatable high-fat diet intake influences mnemonic and emotional aspects in female rats in an estrous cycle-dependent manner.Metabolic brain disease · 2021Article
- Behavioral and Neurobiological Consequences of Hedonic Feeding on Alcohol Drinking.Current pharmaceutical design · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Eating tasty foods dampens responses to stress - an idea reflected in the colloquial term 'comfort foods'. To study the neurobiological mechanisms by which palatable foods provide stress relief, we previously characterized a limited sucrose intake (LSI) paradigm in which male rats are given twice-daily access to 4 ml of 30% sucrose solution (vs. water as a control), and subsequently have reduced hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis responsivity and anxiety-related behaviors. Notably, women may be more prone to 'comfort feeding' than men, and this may vary across the menstrual cycle, suggesting the potential for important sex and estrous cycle differences. In support of this idea, LSI reduces HPA axis responses in female rats during the proestrus/estrus (P/E), as opposed to the diestrus 1/diestrus 2 (D1/D2) estrous cycle stage. However, the effect of LSI on anxiety-related behaviors in females remains unknown. Here we show that LSI reduced stress-related behaviors in female rats in the elevated plus-maze and restraint tests, but not in the open field test, though only during P/E. LSI also decreased the HPA axis stress response primarily during P/E, consistent with prior findings. Finally, cFos immunolabeling (a marker of neuronal activation) revealed that LSI increased post-restraint cFos in the central amygdala medial subdivision (CeM) and the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis posterior subnuclei (BSTp) exclusively during P/E. These results suggest that in female rats, palatable food reduces both behavioral and neuroendocrine stress responses in an estrous cycle-dependent manner, and the CeM and BSTp are implicated as potential mediators of these effects.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.