The role of experience in the "spontaneous" activity of hungry rats.

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Abstract
In Wistar-strain rats living in a circular stabilimeter cage, electromagnetic counters recorded any motion by a rat which shifted the center of gravity of the cage from one quadrant to another. At a fixed time each day all rats were subjected for 5 min. to the cessation of a masking noise and an illumination change either from light to dark or from dark to light. For half of the animals this 5 min. environmental change terminated in the daily feeding; for the other half the daily feeding came at a different time. When the environmental change regularly preceded feeding a marked progressive increase was obtained in activity in response to the change; when the change was uncorrelated with feeding, activity decreased progressively. The results oppose the usual assumption that hunger per se increases activity; instead they support the hypothesis that increases of activity in the case of hunger tend to be specific to external stimuli correlated with feeding in the past experience of the animals.

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