The European journal of neuroscienceOct 30, 2009

Brain clocks that adjust to feeding times

Circadian Biology Weekly Brief ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗

Updated Mar 29, 2026

Abstract

Restricted feeding schedules may induce circadian rhythms in food-anticipatory activities in rodents.

Circadian rhythms in clock gene expression are found in various brain regions linked to motivation, emotion, learning, hormone release, and feeding.
Food-anticipatory activities include increases in core body temperature, activity, and hormone release prior to mealtime.
Restricted feeding schedules are associated with shifts in daily oscillation of clock gene expression in brain areas related to feeding and energy balance.
Lesions in specific brain nuclei affect rats' responses to restricted feeding but do not eliminate all food-anticipatory activities.
A distributed neural system may underlie the generation and regulation of food-anticipatory activities during restricted feeding.

Simplified

Circadian rhythms in mammalian behaviour and physiology rely on daily oscillations in the expression of canonical clock genes. Circadian rhythms in clock gene expression are observed in the master circadian clock, the suprachiasmatic nucleus but are also observed in many other brain regions that have diverse roles, including influences on motivational and emotional state, learning, hormone release and feeding. Increasingly, important links between circadian rhythms and metabolism are being uncovered. In particular, restricted feeding (RF) schedules which limit food availability to a single meal each day lead to the induction and entrainment of circadian rhythms in food-anticipatory activities in rodents. Food-anticipatory activities include increases in core body temperature, activity and hormone release in the hours leading up to the predictable mealtime. Crucially, RF schedules and the accompanying food-anticipatory activities are also associated with shifts in the daily oscillation of clock gene expression in diverse brain areas involved in feeding, energy balance, learning and memory, and motivation. Moreover, lesions of specific brain nuclei can affect the way rats will respond to RF, but have generally failed to eliminate all food-anticipatory activities. As a consequence, it is likely that a distributed neural system underlies the generation and regulation of food-anticipatory activities under RF. Thus, in the future, we would suggest that a more comprehensive approach should be taken, one that investigates the interactions between multiple circadian oscillators in the brain and body, and starts to report on potential neural systems rather than individual and discrete brain areas.

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Brain clocks that adjust to feeding times

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