Home › Cell Biology › Progressive-ratio Responding for Palatable High-fat and High-sugar Food in Mice
Cell Biology JoVE (Open Access) Citable · DOI

Progressive-ratio Responding for Palatable High-fat and High-sugar Food in Mice

DOI: 10.3791/3754-v
What you'll learn
  • ✓ Set up progressive ratio operant task
  • ✓ Train mice to respond for food rewards
  • ✓ Measure breakpoint to assess food motivation
  • ✓ Validate task with known reward modulators
Protocol

Biopharma Insights The present report details the protocol employed to measure the rewarding effects of high-fat food in mice using a progressive ratio operant conditioning task.

Difficulty
advanced
Total time
1-2 weeks per cohort
Model organism
Mouse (likely C57BL/6J)
Biosafety
BSL-1

Steps

1
Acclimate mice and restrict food

Acclimate mice to the testing environment and implement food restriction to increase motivation for palatable food rewards.

▶ 02:27
2
Train mice in operant conditioning

Train mice to nose-poke or lever-press to obtain high-fat or high-sugar food rewards under a fixed ratio schedule.

▶ 04:16
3
Test progressive ratio responding

Assess motivation by increasing the response requirement each trial and determining the breakpoint at which the mouse stops responding.

▶ 08:43
4
Validate task with known manipulations

Demonstrate breakpoint changes following pharmacological or genetic manipulations known to affect food reward to confirm assay sensitivity.

▶ 09:53
💬 Comments coming soon