With actual major health problems linked to food and drink intakes such as alcoholism and obesity, the search to define the role of brain and molecular mechanisms in regulating food and drink intake has taken on a new priority.

Knowledge in the field of animal energetics is largely based upon indirect calorimetry, which is estimation of metabolic heat production by the organism from measurement of indices such as oxygen consumption or carbon dioxide production.

Progressive-ratio (PR) schedules permit studying food-motivated behavior.

Self administration is a classical model of human drug-taking behavior and consists in establishing in rodents an operant conditioning of an instrumental response (nose-poke, lever pressure) to obtain a reward, according to a fix or progressive ratio.

The purpose of the Conditioned Place Preference test is to characterize the rewarding potential of a drug or other experimental condition.

Social transmission of food preference is a test that is used in rodents to assess memory processes as well as social interaction ability.

The delayed matching to position/non-matching to position tasks (DMTP/DNMTP) are used to assess spatial working memory. 

The recognition test is based on the natural tendency of rodents to investigate a novel congener instead of a familiar one.