Fast ballistic food-procuring movements in rats: Phenomenology and probable controlling mechanisms

Parameters of fast ballistic food-procuring movements were studied in albino rats. With the use of video and photorecording, the number of attempts used by an animal to get the food globula, duration of the movements, and their phasic structure were analyzed within the whole learning period and certain experimental days. When the motor skill had been formed, programed ballistic components characterized by hard-to-modify parameters and components with a considerable impact of reverse afferentation in their formation and performance were analyzed. The experimental data are interpreted in terms of the expediency of using the operant motor reactions performed by rats getting food from a narrow manger as a model of voluntary motor activity in electrophysiological, behavioral, neurochemical, and morphological studies. The regularities in formation of motor programs, initiation, realization, and control of the movements, and central mechanisms of these phenomena are discussed.