Oran M Rahamim

Abstract Rodent studies of the taste system commonly employ two methods of taste administration (MOA): active licking from spouts or intra-oral cannula (IOC) deliveries. While bottle drinking preserves natural consumption behavior, IOC administration, where animals receive liquids passively into their oral cavity, provides precise temporal control of stimulus delivery but limits the reliability of measuring voluntary intake and hedonic response.

Abstract Food intake varies across the stages of a rat's estrous cycle. It is reasonable to hypothesize that this cyclic fluctuation in consumption reflects an impact of hormones on taste palatability/preference, but evidence for this hypothesis has been mixed, and critical within-subject experiments in which rats sample multiple tastes during each of the four main estrous phases (metestrus, diestrus, proestrus, and estrus) have been scarce.