The nature and function of interoceptive signals to feed: toward integration of physiological and learning perspectives.

The idea that different states of energy need give rise to distinct interoceptive sensations has been basic to many accounts of the physiological and the learned controls of feeding. Yet, a number of difficulties have complicated attempts to provide direct evidence for this view. The present article describes a research strategy that confirms that food deprivation states produce salient interoceptive stimuli in rats. The implications of this research for the physiological origins of energy state signals, the brain structures involved with processing energy state information, and the manner in which signals of energy need influence feeding were considered. The possibility that food deprivation cues influence feeding by modulating the activation of associations involving external events and their postingestive aftereffects was discussed with reference to earlier associative accounts of the function of hunger signals.