Ontogeny of renin-induced salt appetite in the rat pup

✍ Scribed by Micah Leshem; Alan N. Epstein

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1989
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 577 KB
• Volume: 22
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0012-1630
• DOI: 10.1002/dev.420220503

✦ Synopsis

lntracerebroventricular injections of renin in suckling rat pups increased intake of NaCl solutions when they were orally infused 5 hr after injection. The appetite for saline solution was evident in pups as young as 3 days, was greater in females, and was specific insofar as intake of milk, either by suckling or by oral infusion, was not affected. Three-day-old pups increased intake only to 12% NaCl, the acceptable concentration of NaCl becoming lower in older pups. These results suggest, first, that, as is true for feeding and drinking, the brain mechanism for salt appetite is competent for expression of the behavior in the very young rat pup, and second, that its angiotensinergic neural substrate is distinct from that which mediates the dipsogenic effect of the hormone.

Suckling rat pups evince a precocious capacity to express adult-like ingestive behaviors when submitted to experimental challenges. Such research reveals the ontogeny of the neural substrates of regulatory behaviors. This has been shown for feeding (