Reinforcing Properties of Wheel Running

缺乏身体活动被认为是一个重大的公共卫生问题，因为缺乏身体活动大大增加了死于心脏病、糖尿病和癌症的风险。解决这一问题需要普通民众更多地参与锻炼。虽然这个目标说起来容易，但事实证明很难实现。了解更多关于体育活动的奖励特性和影响体育活动动机的因素可能对实现这一目标有用。我的研究项目通过在动物模型中研究影响跑步动机的条件来解决这个问题。在我的实验室里，老鼠通过按压杠杆来获得在轮子里奔跑的机会。老鼠越有动力去跑步，或者跑步对老鼠来说越有回报，它们就越努力地去争取跑步的机会。跑步作为一种奖励的特性和影响其奖励价值的条件并不像食物和水那样为人所熟知。它们与食物和水的奖励价值有何不同，又有哪些相似之处？在我的研究计划中，我将探索跑步的价值如何随着老鼠被给予跑步的时间而变化，跑步的外在激励如何影响跑步的内在奖励效果，以及老鼠不控制体重时的跑步是否与老鼠控制体重时的跑步相似。

Physical inactivity is considered a major public health issue in that inactivity contributes significantly to risk of death from heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Addressing this issue requires increased participation in exercise by the general population. While this goal is easy to state, it has proven difficult to accomplish. Learning more about the rewarding properties of physical activity and factors that influence motivation to engage in physical activity may prove useful with respect to accomplishing this goal. My research program addresses this issue by studying the conditions that influence motivation to run in an animal model. In my lab, rats work, by pressing a lever, to obtain an opportunity to run in a wheel. The more motivated the rats are to run or the more rewarding running is for the rats, the harder they tend to work for that opportunity to run. The properties of running as a reward and the conditions that influence its rewarding value are not was well known as those for food and water. How do they differ from, and in what ways are they similar to, the rewarding value of food and water? In my research program, I will explore how the value of running may change with duration that a rat is given to run, how extrinsic incentives for running may affect the intrinsic rewarding effects of running, and if running when rats are not weight controlled is similar to that when rats are weight controlled.