Lateral hypothalamic stimulation can augment or attenuate nucleus gigantocellularis escape: evidence for appetite-associated aversion amelioration.

Carr and Coons (1982a, 1982b) found that lateral hypothalamic (LH) stimulation ameliorates the aversiveness of stimulation of pain-implicated nucleus gigantocellularis (NGC), but this finding disagrees with other findings. To resolve this disagreement, we tested whether amelioration is differentially associated with the ability of LH stimulation to support self-stimulation (SS), to support responding to escape LH stimulation (LH escape), or to elicit stimulation-bound feeding (SBF). LH stimulation not yielding SBF always increased responding to escape from NGC stimulation (NGC escape) and was reward-escape in nature in supporting LH escape as well as SS. By contrast, LH stimulation yielding SBF always reduced NGC escape and was purely rewarding in that it only supported SS and never LH escape. In an additional experiment, the anxiolytic diazepam augmented the ability of LH stimulation yielding SBF to reduce NGC escape.