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Feeding behavior of 6- to 12-month-old infants: assessment and sources of parental information.

Both the infant's development of feeding skill and self-regulatory competence during the second 6 months of life have implications for weaning and for a weaning diet. This article examines four categories of feeding skills: taking food from a spoon; handling thicker, lumpy foods and foods that require chewing; self-feeding with fingers or a spoon; and drinking from a cup and managing the bottle. These skills are fundamental for the development of self-regulatory competence through the phases of sensorimotor modulation (from 3 months of age to approximately 9 to 12 months) and control (9 to 12 months of age). Available instruments to assess feeding skill and self-regulatory competence are described. Questions concerning feeding practices in relation to the infant's development of feeding skill and self-regulatory competence are raised. Potential conflicts between professional and lay sources, informational methods used and preferred, and the types of problems for which help is sought are discussed.

Feeding Behavior↗

Analysis of lateralized components of feeding behavior in the ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta).

Twenty-one ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) were videotaped during feeding. They had previously been classified as left-, right- or ambipreferent on the basis of the hand used to reach for food. The feeding sequences provided duration-based measures of manipulation, hand and mouth lateralization, and posture during feeding sequences with 2 types of food. Hand preference for reaching and holding was stable over time and across measurement conditions. As a group, the lemurs grasped fruit bimanually more often than chow; however, right- and ambipreferent lemurs spent more time holding food bimanually than did left-preferent ones. Older animals consumed chow more quickly than did younger animals but did not differ in their rate of manipulation. Lemurs had a preference for using one side of the mouth in feeding, but this had no directional relation to preferred hand. Three postural feeding patterns were identified.

Animals↗

Feeding behavior in rats on a complete diet containing Concanavalin A.

Canavalia ensiformis is a tropical legume which could be used in animal feeding. However, it contains a lectin, Concanavalin A (Con A) which is harmful to animals. When rats are presented with a diet containing Con A, rejection of the food appears very soon after the beginning of ingestion. In order to examine this rejection phenomenon 3 studies were carried out. The rejection was found not to be due to a neophobic response, nor could it be attributed to a conditioned taste aversion. The gastric intubation study suggested the hypothesis that it could be the binding of the lectin to the glycosylated molecules from the gut membrane which impaired absorption and hence food intake.

Animals↗

[The participation of neuropeptide Y and the catecholaminergic systems of the brain in feeding behavior].

Following intracerebroventricular (icv) administration of the lowest doses (100 ng) of neuropeptide Y (NPY) the feeding behaviour was suppressed, while higher doses (5 mcg) of NPY enhanced it. Prazosin (9.5 nmol, icv), a selective alpha 1-adrenoceptor antagonist, attenuated the stimulatory effect of 5 mcg NPY on food intake. Yohimbine (15 nmol, icv) and propranolol (5 mg/kg, ip) had no effect on NPY-induced feeding behaviour. Naloxone inhibited NPY-induced feeding behaviour and did not influence on the NPY-induced suppression of food intake. These data give evidence for heterogeneity among the central NPY receptors. The effect of NPY on feeding behaviour may, at least in part, be mediated via alpha 1-adrenoceptors.

Animals↗

Feeding behavior in dopamine-deficient mice.

Mice that cannot make dopamine (DA), a condition caused by the selective inactivation of tyrosine hydroxylase in dopaminergic neurons, are born normal but gradually become hypoactive and hypophagic, and die at 3 weeks of age. We characterized the feeding and locomotor responses of these DA-deficient (DA-/-) mice to 3, 4-dihyroxy-L-phenylalanine (L-DOPA) to investigate the relationship between brain DA levels and these complex behaviors. Daily administration of L-DOPA to DA-/- mice stimulated locomotor activity that lasted 6 to 9 hr; during that time the mice consumed most of their daily food and water. The minimal dose of L-DOPA that was sufficient to elicit normal feeding behavior in the DA-/- mice also restored their striatal DA to 9.1% of that in the wild-type (WT) mice at 3 hr; then DA content declined to <1% of WT levels by 24 hr. This dose of L-DOPA induced locomotor activity that exceeded that of treated WT mice by 5- to 7-fold, suggesting that DA-/- mice are supersensitive to DA. Unexpectedly, DA-/- mice manifested a second wave of activity 24 to 48 hr after L-DOPA treatment that was equivalent in magnitude to that of WT mice and independent of DA receptor activation. The DA-/- mice approached, sniffed, and chewed food during this second period of activity, but they ate <10% of that required for sustenance. Therefore, DA-/- mice can execute behaviors necessary to seek and ingest food, but they do not eat enough to survive.

Animals↗

Feeding behavior of lactating brown lemur females (Eulemur fulvus) in Mayotte: influence of infant age and plant phenology.

Altmann [Baboon Mothers and Infants, University of Chicago Press, 1980] and Dunbar and Dunbar [Animal Behavior 36:970-980, 1988] provided a model that predicts the amount of time spent feeding by lactating baboon females, as related to infant age. Dunbar's model further suggests that food quality affects the amount of time that females devote to feeding activity, and is predictable from rainfall and temperature data. In this study the model was tested with data recorded from births of the Mayotte brown lemur from four maternal dyads (Eulemur fulvus). This study also examines the correlation between female activity budget, quantities of fresh plant matter ingested, and suckling duration using data collected from focal animal samples on the mother-infant dyads. The relationships among rainfall, food supply, and food quality were also tested. It appears that female brown lemurs do not devote more time to feeding during the infant growth period. The data show that female brown lemurs increased their food intake during the early-lactating period when the frequency of suckling is the highest, and before infants begin to eat substantial amounts of solid foods. Thus, the frequency of feeding reflects the cost of lactation better than suckling duration. Furthermore, females did not appear to select foods according to their availability or rainfall levels. I hypothesize that the lack of convergence between lemur data and baboon observations is due to differences between their respective environments and their feeding ecology. These data also indicate that the most significant lactating cost for the brown lemur occurs during the early lactation period.

Aging↗

Correlated changes in feeding behavior on selection for large and small body size in mice.

An automated method was used to record the temporal pattern of feeding of lines of mice selected over 15 generations for high and low body weight (L-mice and S-mice, respectively). Both L-mice and S-mice eat in meals concentrated during the night, and meal frequency is similar in the two lines, but L-mice consume much larger meals, each made up of many more separate feeding bouts. The outbred strain from which the selected lines were derived has a similar basic pattern of feeding in meals, which becomes like that of L-mice when the animal's thermogenic metabolic rate is high, and like that of S-mice when it is low, suggesting that the differences between the feeding patterns of the two selected lines are a secondary consequence of alterations in whole body metabolic rate.

Animals↗