Lateral Hypothalamus: Learning of Food-Seeking Response Motivated by Electrical Stimulation

Stimulation of the lateral hypothalamus, which induces eating, resembles hunger in that it motivates rats to learn, for food reward, a response of pressing a bar. The response is discriminatively confined to only a bar that delivers food on either a 100-percent or a partial schedule of reinforcement. This discriminative responding can be transferred to hunger that is normally induced by deprivation of food.