Recovery of feeding and drinking by rats after intraventricular 6-hydroxydopamine or lateral hypothalamic lesions.

Rats given intraventricular injections of 6-hydroxydopamine after pretreatment with pargyline become aphagic and adipsic, and show severe loss of brain catecholamines. Like rats with lateral hypothalamic lesions, these animals gradually recover ingestive behaviors, although catecholamine depletions are permanent. Both groups decrease food and water intakes markedly after the administration of alpha-methyltyrosine, at doses that do not affect the ingestive behaviors of control rats. Thus, both the loss and recovery of feeding and drinking behaviors may involve central catecholamine-containing neurons.