The steady increase in obesity rates over the past four decades necessitates preclinical models of “food addiction” that accurately capitulate the psychological hallmarks of overeating. Neurobiological inquiry is critical to understand the motivational and hormonal dysregulation that occurs with overconsumption of calorically dense and palatable foods. In this issue of Neuropsychopharmacology, Spierling et al. carefully considered diagnostic features of food addiction to develop and validate motivational constructs in a variant of the intermittent access to palatable food-seeking model. After identifying a subset of rats that develop compulsive-like food-seeking behavior, the authors studied the associated hormonal profiles and corticostriatal pathway involvement [1].

By extending their previously developed model [2, 3], Spierling et al. draw from drug self-administration literature, aiming to examine the effect of brief versus long intermittent access to highly palatable diet exposure on the emergence of compulsive-like motivation in female rats. Classic compulsivity measures include persistence of drug seeking when the drug is unavailable (responding during no-drug periods), high motivation (increased progressive-ratio responding), and continued responding despite harmful consequences (shock-punished responding) [4]. Here, Spierling et al. identified the compulsive-like behaviors arising in a subset of rats exposed intermittently to highly palatable food [1]. The authors used four experimental groups, including a continuous access to chow-only group, a continuous access to the preferred, high-sucrose, nutritionally complete diet (palatable), a brief-access intermittent group with 30 min of access to the palatable diet every 48 h, and a long-access intermittent group with 24 h of access to the palatable diet every 48 h.

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