Reinforcing Properties of Wheel Running

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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.