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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1989

Food hoarding behaviour in the golden hamster (Mesocricetus auratus): effects of body weight loss and hoard-size discrimination.

Two experiments investigated some of the factors that influence food hoarding behaviour in the golden hamster (Mesocricetus auratus). In Experiment 1, hamsters given limited access to food failed to increase the amount of food they consumed at each meal. Instead, they exhibited a significant increase in the amount of food taken to hoard during the limited access period, and this permitted hamsters who were allowed to retain their hoard to maintain body weight at levels comparable to free-feeding controls. Hamsters that were not allowed to retain hoarded food rapidly lost body weight. There was also an inverse correlation between body weight and amount of food taken to hoard in all hamsters given limited access to food, suggesting that body weight loss was one factor directly related to increased hoarding during periods of limited food accessibility. Experiment 2 investigated the effect of hoard-size discrimination on food hoarding in hamsters by artificially manipulating hoard size. The results suggested that hoarding behaviour could be influenced by artificially depleting and repleting the hoard, and this factor appears to influence hoarding in the absence of any significant changes in body weight. These results are discussed in relation to the kinds of adaptive feeding strategies that hamsters may utilize in their natural environment.

Animals↗
PubMed1990

Blockade of hoarding in rats by diazepam: an analysis of the anxiety and object value hypotheses of hoarding.

The "security hypothesis" suggests food hoarding by rats serves to preempt attack and therefore might be motivated by "anxiety". The "object value" hypothesis suggests rats hoard objects that they perceive as valuable as related to some state or need. These hypotheses were evaluated with the anxiolytic drug diazepam, which is purported to both decrease anxiety and increase motivation to eat, and which accordingly either may decrease or increase hoarding. Using a new hoarding paradigm, diazepam (Valium: 0.25-5 mg/kg), was found to produce a dose-related reduction in hoarding that was dependent upon food pellet size and that was reversed by flumazenil (Ro 15-1788), a benzodiazepine receptor antagonist. Diazepam also slowed eating speed, blocked "dodging", a movement used to initiate hoarding, and impaired spatial navigation in a learning-set swimming pool task. The results fail to support the object value hypothesis of hoarding. Since perception of food size, motivation, motor ability and spatial abilities all probably contribute to successful food hoarding, the results provide several explanations other than, or in addition to, anxiety reduction for the drug's effects on hoarding. Nevertheless, the study provides a number of new sensitive measures of the effects of anxiolytic drugs and new insights into their behavioral effects.

Animals↗
PubMed1996

Food deprivation-induced increases in hoarding by Siberian hamsters are not photoperiod-dependent.

Siberian hamsters increase food hoarding in response to chronic food restriction and food deprivation, conditions that lead to a loss of body mass and fat. Therefore, the first purpose of the present experiments was to test further the effects of food deprivation on food hoarding by varying the length and order of repeated fasts to address the following questions: 1. Does the magnitude of the food-hoarding response increase as food deprivation length increases? 2, Is the effect of good deprivation on food hoarding experience-dependent? Second, we were interested in testing the effects of short winter-like days (SDs) on food hoarding. We tested this by measuring food hoarding in long days (LDs) and SDs during baseline conditions and after food deprivation to address the following question: Does SD exposure increase baseline and food deprivation-induced hoarding due to the naturally occurring SD-induced decreases in body fat? During each experiment, we were interested in determining how hamsters utilize their food hoard (i.e., add to it and eat from it). Our results extended those of our previous studies in showing that: 1. Food-deprivation length and the initial food-hoard size were not related to one another; 2. The maintenance of food-hoard size was proportional to the length of the fast; 3. The effects of a bout of food deprivation on food hoarding were dependent upon the lengths of previous fasts; 4. Baseline food hoarding was not different between LD- and SD-exposed hamsters; 5. The maintenance of food-hoard size, but not the initial fast-induced increases in food-hoard size, were increased in SDs; 6. Hamsters ate approximately 25-33% of their daily food intake from the food hoard under all conditions, with the degree of food replacement increasing as fast length was increased; and 7. The typical SD-induced decrease in food intake was reflected in the food eaten from the food supply found outside the burrow, but food eaten from the hoard was increased. Collectively, the results of the present experiments suggest that the initiation of food hoarding may be associated with short-term fluctuations in energy metabolism associated with fasting, but that the more long-term decreases in body mass (fat) are involved in the maintenance of food-hoard size.

Animals↗
PubMed2006

Hoarding in obsessive-compulsive disorder: results from the OCD Collaborative Genetics Study.

Hoarding behavior occurs frequently in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Results from previous studies suggest that individuals with OCD who have hoarding symptoms are clinically different than non-hoarders and may represent a distinct clinical group. In the present study, we compared 235 hoarding to 389 non-hoarding participants, all of whom had OCD, collected in the course of the OCD Collaborative Genetics Study. We found that, compared to non-hoarding individuals, hoarders were more likely to have symmetry obsessions and repeating, counting, and ordering compulsions; poorer insight; more severe illness; difficulty initiating or completing tasks; and indecision. Hoarders had a greater prevalence of social phobia and generalized anxiety disorder. Hoarders also had a greater prevalence of obsessive-compulsive and dependent personality disorders. Five personality traits were independently associated with hoarding: miserliness, preoccupation with details, difficulty making decisions, odd behavior or appearance, and magical thinking. Hoarding and indecision were more prevalent in the relatives of hoarding than of non-hoarding probands. Hoarding in relatives was associated with indecision in probands, independently of proband hoarding status. The findings suggest that hoarding behavior may help differentiate a distinct clinical subgroup of people with OCD and may aggregate in some OCD families. Indecision may be a risk factor for hoarding in these families.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

Hoarding behaviors in a large college sample.

Hoarding behaviors occur in many clinical syndromes but are most commonly linked to obsessive compulsive disorder. Surprisingly little empirical work has examined the nature of hoarding behaviors despite their association with significant distress and impairment. The current study examined hoarding in 563 unselected college students. Using principal components analysis, we identified four domains of hoarding behaviors as measured by the 26-item Saving Inventory-Revised: Difficulty Discarding, Acquisition Problems, Clutter, and Interference/Distress. All four domains and total hoarding behaviors were strongly related to hoarding beliefs and to obsessive compulsive (OC) symptoms. Hoarding behaviors were most strongly correlated with subscales of an OC disorder (OCD) measure assessing hoarding and obsessions and least strongly correlated with the washing subscale. Hoarding behaviors also showed significant, but more modest, correlations with social anxiety, depressive symptoms, and worry. However, worry was not found to contribute unique variance to the prediction of hoarding behaviors. Of greatest note, hoarding behaviors showed a surprisingly strong relationship with anxiety sensitivity, similar in magnitude to the relationship between hoarding and OCD symptoms. Results are interpreted and lines of future research are proposed, with particular emphasis on further elucidating the relationship between hoarding behaviors and anxiety sensitivity.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

Hoarding in obsessive compulsive disorder: results from a case-control study.

Hoarding occurs relatively frequently in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and there is evidence that patients with hoarding symptoms have more severe OCD and are less responsive to treatment. In the present study, we investigated hoarding symptoms in 126 subjects with OCD. Nearly 30% of the subjects had hoarding symptoms; hoarding was twice as prevalent in males than females. Compared to the 90 non-hoarding subjects, the 36 hoarding individuals had an earlier age at onset of, and more severe, obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Hoarders had greater prevalences of symmetry obsessions, counting compulsions, and ordering compulsions. Hoarders also had greater prevalences of social phobia, personality disorders, and pathological grooming behaviors (skin picking, nail biting, and trichotillomania). Hoarding and tics were more frequent in first-degree relatives of hoarding than non-hoarding probands. The findings suggest that the treatment of OCD patients with hoarding symptoms may be complicated by more severe OCD and the presence of co-occurring disorders. Hoarding appears to be transmitted in some OCD families and may differentiate a clinical subgroup of OCD.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1977

Interaction of hunger and thirst in the motivational arousal underlying hoarding behavior in the rat.

Rats were studied in which hoarding of food could be elicited by a 16-hr food deprivation schedule. It was found that (a) prolonged water restriction, with food ad lib, failed to induced hoarding in spite of a spontaneous reduction in food intake and a fall in body weight to below levels normally critical for the onset of hoarding. Thus, different physiological deficits are not necessarily equivalent or additive in the elicitation of food hoarding, and water lack may suppress it. (b) Hoarding behavior was released in water-deprived animals by a brief drink of water. A 30-min delay to allow absorption of the ingested water significantly enhanced the release of hoarding. Air drinking by water-deprived rats did not release hoarding. Thus, the absence of hoarding during water lack may be caused by an active inhibitory process that can itself be inhibited or canceled by postingestional effects of drinking but not by oropharyngeal stimulation mimicking water signals. (c) Although water lack prevented hoarding in response to concomitant self-imposed fasting, hoarding ensued at maximal rates when a further mild degree of food deprivation was superimposed. Thus, the inhibition of hoarding by dehydration operates subtractively, not multiplicatively, and, with free access to food, the inhibition of hoarding by thirst tends to be balanced, exactly, by the facilitatory effect of concomitant fasting; thus superadded food deprivation can take full effect. It is concluded that in states of motivational arousal, specific inhibitory mechanisms may inhibit, subtractively, certain activities biologically irrelevant to prevailing physiological needs.

Animals↗
PubMed1999

Hoarding in obsessive-compulsive disorder: a report of 20 cases.

BACKGROUND: We describe the demographic characteristics, hoarding phenomenology, comorbid disorders, family histories, and treatment response of 20 adult obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients exhibiting hoarding behavior. METHOD: We utilized the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R, the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale, and a semistructured interview to gather data. RESULTS: We studied 9 women and 11 men. Their hoarding began from age 5 years to age 46 years (mean +/- SD age at onset = 20 +/- 11 years); hoarding was evident before the onset of other OCD symptoms in 9 patients. The most commonly hoarded items were newspapers and magazines, junk mail, old clothes, notes or lists, and old receipts. Hoarded material occupied from one room plus most or all closets to more than one room plus all closets, the garage, and yard. Seven patients rented additional storage space for hoarded items. Eighty-four percent of patients reported a family history of hoarding, and 80% grew up in a household where someone else hoarded. The most frequent primary motives for hoarding were fears of discarding something useful and discarding something that would be needed in the future. Lifetime prevalence of major depression and of impulse-control disorders, especially compulsive shopping, were high; only 3 patients met DSM-IV criteria for obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. Response of hoarding to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors was less robust than is expected for obsessive-compulsive disorder. CONCLUSION: Whether hoarding behaviors mark a subset of obsessive-compulsive disorder patients with a different pathophysiology or functional anatomy deserves investigation.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2004

Influence of pellet size on rat's hoarding behavior.

The body weight threshold for hoarding behavior of rats is routinely used as a means to discern an animal's body weight regulation. We explored whether the size of food pellets would modify hoarding and the hoarding threshold. In Experiment 1, we offered the rats either large (ca. 5 g) or small (ca. 2 g) food pellets on alternate days while keeping their body weights within a narrow range when they were not in the hoarding sessions. The hoarding threshold was not influenced, by food size (312+/-32 g small and 298+/-13 g large pellets, N.S.). On the other hand, the relationship between hoarded food and body mass significantly differed between small and large pellets (ratio of 2.7). Because such a ratio was similar to that of the respective pellet weights, this suggests that the more the rat is deprived of food, the more willing it is, in a predetermined manner, to move about in search of food. Experiment 2 verified this hypothesis: instead of weighing the food hoarded, we counted the number of pellets hoarded. The slopes of the regression lines were similar in both cases, when the pellets were counted and when the hoarded food was weighed. Results showed no significant differences between these two approaches, suggesting that the weight of hoarded food is a good indicator of the number of trips from home to food in the hoarding experiment.

Animal Feed↗
PubMed2003

Hoarding behavior in the elderly: a comparison between community-dwelling persons and nursing home residents.

OBJECTIVE: To determine correlates of hoarding behavior in frail elderly persons. METHODS: Information about nursing home residents (n = 408) and community-dwelling senior day-care participants (n = 177) was gathered through interviews with family and professional caregivers, medical chart review, and physician examinations, and included the following areas of assessment: hoarding behavior, demographic and health information, level of cognitive functioning, activities of daily living (ADL) performance, depressed affect, social functioning, manifestations of agitated behaviors, and previous stressful life experiences. RESULTS: We found that 15% of the nursing home residents and 25% of the community-dwelling senior day-care participants manifested hoarding behavior at a rate of several times a week or higher. For nursing home residents, hoarding behavior was significantly related to a larger appetite, taking fewer medications, higher social functioning, comparatively less ADL impairment, and manifestations of physically nonaggressive agitated behaviors. For senior day-care participants, hoarding behavior was significantly associated with being female, a larger appetite, comparatively less gait impairment, fewer medical diagnoses, more involvement in activities, a positive diagnosis of dementia, hallucinations, the delusion of infidelity, and manifestations of three syndromes of agitated behaviors. CONCLUSION: While hoarding behavior in our samples presents differently from compulsive hoarding described in the literature, we obtained robust findings that show that despite differences in living conditions, the elderly persons who manifested hoarding behavior were those with relatively fewer health and functional disabilities. In addition, those who exhibited hoarding behavior also manifested agitated behaviors. We suggest that future researchers develop alternative measures of hoarding behavior so as to further clarify the phenomenon of hoarding behavior in the elderly.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed2002

Hoarding in obsessive-compulsive disorder and related disorders: a preliminary report of 15 cases.

Hoarding, the repetitive collection of excessive quantities of poorly useable items of little or no value with failure to discard these items over time, is characterized in DSM-IV as a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) but has, until recently, received scant empirical investigation. We describe the demographics, phenomenology, associated psychopathology and family history in 15 subjects presenting with hoarding behavior. Fifteen subjects were recruited from an OCD clinic and newspaper advertisement and assessed with the comprehensive Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID I and II), the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS), and a hoarding questionnaire (devised by the authors). The sample comprised 11 women and four men who hoarded a mean of seven item types, with a mean duration of 13.2 +/- 3.9 years (range 2-15 years). Their mean age was 41.8 +/- 14.3 years (range 20-65 years). The most common motive for hoarding was the fear of discarding items of practical value. Nine subjects met DSM-IV criteria for OCD, 9 met criteria for OCPD, for symptoms and behaviors other than hoarding, while six subjects met criteria for a putative OCD spectrum disorder (Tourette's, body dysmorphic disorder, trichotillomania). Six subjects reported little or no control over their hoarding, but only one subject saw her symptoms as an 'illness' warranting treatment. Pathological hoarding is usually a covert and chronic behavior causing distress and/or impairment, and may be related to OCD and OCPD. Hoarding may meet the criterion for a compulsion in DSM-IV, yet there is evidence to suggest that hoarding may manifest in a variety of other psychiatric conditions. While a range of pharmacologic and behavioral treatments have been tried, their effectiveness in managing hoarding behaviors requires additional research.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

Hoarding symptoms in patients on a geriatric psychiatry inpatient unit.

BACKGROUND: While collecting may be a normal behaviour, hoarding is a symptom of various psychiatric disorders, including obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD). Although anecdotal reports suggest that hoarding is not uncommon in geriatric psychiatry populations, its psychopathological correlates in such samples have not been well characterised. METHODS: The presence of clinically significant hoarding symptoms was screened for in 100 consecutive patients in a geriatric psychiatry inpatient unit. Both patient and collateral histories were obtained. When hoarding symptoms were present, a detailed history of their phenomenology was obtained by means of a structured questionnaire and the response of hoarding symptoms to treatment during hospitalisation was monitored. RESULTS: Clinically significant hoarding was found in 5/100 subjects. Four of these 5 patients met DSM-IV criteria for schizophrenia (paranoid subtype), with onset of symptoms coinciding with increased symptoms of dementia. The fifth patient met criteria for bipolar disorder (manic episode), also had symptoms of dementia, and had a lifelong history of hoarding. Hoarding behaviours responded to antipsychotic treatment in 3 of the 5 patients. CONCLUSIONS: A history of hoarding may be useful in many psychiatric patients, but psychopathological correlates of this symptom are likely to vary with age. In a geriatric psychiatry inpatient population hoarding was associated not with OCD or OCPD, but rather with paranoid schizophrenia and increasing symptoms of dementia. Dopamine blockers appeared useful in decreasing hoarding in some patients, raising interesting questions about the neurobiology of this symptom.

Aged↗
PubMed1996

Why do pouched mice (Saccostomus campestris) hoard food?

The function of food hoarding in Saccostomus campestris was investigated by examining the effect of photoperiod and temperature on the amount of two different types of food that were eaten and stored in artificial burrows by pouched mice from four different localities which experience contrasting climatic regimes. Food consumption was influenced by a variety of factors including the type of food, the sex of the individual, photoperiodic and temperature conditions, and the locality from which the animals originated. Females did not hoard significantly more food than males, which might have indicated that the solitary females hoard additional food specifically to provision their young. There was also no evidence that pouched mice hoard food to prepare for future periods of food scarcity, because there was no significant effect of photoperiod or temperature on hoarding activity, and the geographical variation in hoarding observed was not related to differences in climatic conditions at the different localities. However, geographical differences in food consumption and food hoarding were similar so that populations which ate the most food also hoarded the most food. Likewise, hoarding was selective and directed towards preferred food items. It therefore appears that food hoarding in this species may simply be a component of feeding behaviour and possibly serves to limit the amount of time spent processing food outside the burrow.

Animals↗
PubMed2004

Measurement of compulsive hoarding: saving inventory-revised.

Four studies examined a new measure of compulsive hoarding (Saving Inventory-Revised; SI-R). Factor analysis using 139 hoarding participants identified 3 factors: difficulty discarding, excessive clutter, and excessive acquisition. Additional studies were conducted with hoarding participants, OCD participants without hoarding, community controls and an elderly sample exhibiting a range of hoarding behavior. Internal consistencies and test-retest reliabilities were good. The SI-R distinguished hoarding participants from all other non-hoarding comparison groups. The SI-R showed strong correlations with other indices and methods of measuring hoarding (beliefs, activity dysfunction from clutter, observer ratings of clutter in the home) and relatively weaker correlations with non-hoarding measures (positive and negative affect and OCD symptoms). The SI-R appears to be an appropriate instrument for assessing symptoms of compulsive hoarding in clinical and non-clinical samples.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Diet self-selection and food hoarding after food deprivation by Siberian hamsters.

Siberian hamsters (Phodopus sungorus) increase food hoarding, but not food intake, after a fast. Because the physiological mechanisms underlying these changes in food hoarding are virtually unknown, we sought insight into these mechanisms by allowing hamsters to self-select their diet from food sources varying in macronutrient composition and caloric density ("dietary wisdom"). Therefore, the effects of food deprivation length on diet self-selection were tested in adult female hamsters after adaptation to three composite diets: sunflower seeds (SS), pellet chow (PC), and rabbit chow (RC). One group initially was fasted for 32 h, the other for 56 h, and then each was refed. The remaining nonexperienced fast was instated after prefast body mass, food intake, and hoarding were recovered. Food hoarding, but not food intake, was increased regardless of fast length or sequence; moreover, the largest increase in food hoarding was on the first day of refeeding and was primarily reflected as increased SS hoarding. When the longer fast occurred first body mass loss was greater and the increased food hoard size was maintained for more days than when the longer fast came second. The order of food intake and hoarding preferences was not changed after a fast (SS > PC > RC), but the degree of food hoarding preference for SS was exaggerated. Collectively, these results support the notion that food hoarding increases with decreases in lipid stores, and show that when internal lipid stores are decreased, external lipid stores are preferentially increased.

Animals↗
PubMed1989

Qualitative and quantitative analyses of hoarding in medial frontal cortex rats using a new behavioral paradigm.

The study demonstrates novel features of rat hoarding, patterns of recovery from medial frontal cortex damage that are behaviorally dependent, and new methodology for studying hoarding. Rats were placed in a covered cage connected to an alley at the end of which were food pellets varying in size between 20 and 500 mg. Food pellet size directed movements: small food pellets were swallowed immediately, medium sized pellets were held in the paws and eaten, and large pellets were carried back to the cage. After bilateral ablations of the medial frontal cortex, hoarding ceased immediately postoperatively and then partially recovered. Thereafter, food pellets were treated as being smaller than they actually were. The medial frontal cortex rats also hoarded fewer multiple pellets, had slower hoarding speeds, and showed reduced hoarding in 24-h hoarding tests. They were more responsive to illumination changes: as illumination was reduced and finally reversed between the hoarding alley and home cage, they, unlike control rats, reduced and then ceased hoarding. Equivalent change was not produced by eye patches. Damage to medial frontal cortex may change an animal's sensitivity to the many cues provided by the food, the environment, and previous experience in such a way that hoarding responses become increasingly controlled by the immediate, simple, stimulus features of the environment.

Animals↗