| Abstract |
With the growing obesity epidemic, there is a drive to determine a better route for weight reduction. We are interested in mechanisms to increase caloric expenditure in mice and rats, including muscle thermogenesis. We discovered that muscle thermogenesis can be acutely induced by predator threat, specifically predator odor, in rats and mice. In mice, other stimuli may more potently activate this sympathetically- driven muscle thermogenesis. Here, we investigated the potential multimodal activation of muscle thermogenesis in the mice. We hypothesize that the mice will show a greater thermogenic activation when exposed to the multimodal predator stimulus (mobile robotic stimulus) compared to the predator odor because of the increased threat perceived. First, mice were habituated to the conditions of the study. Then, mice were presented with three stimuli in randomized order: control, ferret odor, and the multimodal robotic bug. There was a trend observed toward a significant effect of the multimodal predator threat on muscle thermogenesis with control inducing the lowest thermogenesis, then ferret odor and multimodal predator stimuli with higher activation of thermogenesis. This suggests that the multimodal approach may more potently activate muscle thermogenesis; however, more statistical power is needed. Additional combinations of stimuli can be examined in combination with the multimodal approach.
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| Modified Abstract |
With the growing obesity epidemic, we investigate mechanisms to increase caloric expenditure in mice and rats, including muscle thermogenesis. Muscle thermogenesis can be acutely induced in rats and mice by predator odor. In mice, other stimuli may more potently activate thermogenesis. Here, we investigated the potential multimodal activation of muscle thermogenesis in mice, hypothesizing that the mice will show a greater thermogenic activation when exposed to the multimodal predator stimulus (mobile robotic stimulus). After habituation to experimental conditions, mice were presented with three stimuli in randomized order: control, ferret odor, and the multimodal robotic bug. We observed a trend toward a significant effect of the multimodal predator threat on muscle thermogenesis. Additional statistical power may reveal that the multimodal approach more potently activates muscle thermogenesis.
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