“Appetitive” and “Consummatory” are terms used in the animal behavior literature. I was was briefly confused when I first came across these terms (a year or two ago), because I’m most comfortable thinking in terms of brain algorithms, whereas these terms were about categories of behavior, and the papers I was reading didn’t spell out how the one is related to the other.

I’m somewhat embarrassed to write this because the thesis seems so extremely obvious to me now, and it's probably obvious to many other people too. So if you read the title of this post and were thinking “yeah duh”, then you already get it, and you can stop reading.

Definition of “appetitive” and “consummatory”

In animal behavior there's a distinction between “appetitive behaviors” and “consummatory behaviors”. Here's a nice description from Hansen et al. 1991 (formatting added, references omitted):

It is sometimes helpful to break down [...]

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Outline:

(00:44) Definition of “appetitive” and “consummatory”

(02:55) How do “appetitive” and “consummatory” relate to brain algorithms?

(04:53) Caveats

(05:57) Example of a time when this came up for me: the MPOA→VTA pathway in parental behavior

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First published:

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.