Obesity is a major health risk, with junk food consumption playing a central role in weight gain, because of its high palatability and high-energy nutrients. The Cafeteria (CAF) diet model for animal experiments consists of the same tasty but unhealthy food products that people eat (e.g. hot dogs and muffins), and considers variety, novelty and secondary food features, such as smell and texture. ...

Gonadal hormones affect neuronal morphology to ultimately regulate behaviour. In female rats, oestradiol mediates spine plasticity in hypothalamic and limbic brain structures, contributing to long‐lasting effects on motivated behaviour. Parallel effects of androgens in male rats have not been extensively studied. Here, we investigated the effect of both castration and androgen replacement on spine ...

Serotonin plays an important role in adult female sexual behavior, however little is known about the influence of serotonin during early development on sexual functioning in adulthood. During early development, serotonin acts as neurotrophic factor, while it functions as a modulatory neurotransmitter in adulthood. The occurrence of serotonin release, could thus have different effects on behavioral ...

Both male and female rats produce vocalizations in the presence of a potential sexual partner. In this study, we evaluated the role of vocalizations in sociosexual behaviors in an ecologically valid procedure. Three males and 4 females were housed in a seminatural environment. In each group, 1 or 2 males and females were devocalized, and the other subjects were sham operated. Sociosexual interactions ...

Female mate choice is often investigated in terms of reproductive success in order to understand how male characteristics contribute to sexual attractiveness. Previous studies have found that females rats prefer mating with their first encounter rather than males visited subsequently, suggesting that the rewarding value of this first encounter is enough to reinforce mating with the first partner. ...

The world lost a very dear and brilliant man when Prof Dr Marcel Waldinger passed away this year. I am proud that I got to know him well, and had the chance to learn a lot from him as a scientist. He was passionate about his work related to men and womens sexual dysfunctions, with a special focus on PE, postorgasm illness syndrome, and persistent sexual arousal syndrome.

Although rats are known to emit ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs), it remains unclear whether these calls serve an auditory communication purpose. For USVs to be part of communication, the vocal signals will need to be a transfer of information between two or more conspecifics, and with the possibility to induce changes in the behavior of the recipient. Therefore, the aim of our study was to investigate ...

The present study investigated the role of oestrogen receptor (ER)α in the ventromedial nucleus of the hypothalamus (VMN), the preoptic area (POA), the medial amygdala (MePD) and the bed nucleus of stria terminalis (BNST) in sociosexual behaviour in female rats. This was conducted in two sets of experiments, with the VMN and POA investigated in the first set, and the MePD and BNST in the second set. ...

Masculinization and feminization of rat sexual behavior has been supposed to occur during a short postnatal period. However, much data have made it evident that these processes may continue until adolescence. In the present study, we evaluated whether androgen treatment of females from postnatal day 20 and onwards could alter sexual motivation and behavior in a male direction. Juveniles were ...

Both male and female rats produce 50 kHz ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) in the presence of a sexual partner and during copulation. Previous studies showed that USVs have no incentive value for rats. In this study, we evaluated the role of USVs in behavior during copulation. Three groups of rats were used: sham males paired with sham females, devocalized females paired with sham males, and sham ...