Conditioned Place Preference Deficits in Adulthood Following High Fat and High Sugar Diet Intake in Pre- and Periadolescence: A Test of the Specificity Hypothesis

Obesity is linked to poorer cognitive performance, both of which may result from eating high-fat foods during development. In the present study, preand periadolescent (postnatal days 21 to 40) male rats were fed high fat (HF), high sugar (HS), or rodent chow (Chow) diets. After conditioning for 16 days with either Cheetos (high-fat) or Froot Loops (high-sugar) unconditioned stimuli (US) on one side of a conditioned place preference (CPP) apparatus, rats were tested on postnatal day 61 for a place preference. Chow rats preferred the US-paired side, but HF rats showed no preference. HS rats preferred the side paired with Cheetos but not with Froot Loops. In spite of these deficits, object recognition, a nonassociative learning task, was not impaired. These results show mixed support for the specificity hypothesis, which predicts that CPP deficits will be nutrient-specific. The results show for the first time that eating a HS diet leads to a nutrient-specific CPP deficit (for HS foods), whereas eating a HF diet leads to a general CPP deficit (for HS and HF foods).