Parkinson's disease (PD), as the most prevalent neurodegenerative motor disorder, presents a complex spectrum of symptoms encompassing both motor impairments (bradykinesia, resting tremor, freezing of gait) and non-motor manifestations (depression, anosmia, anxiety). Robust animal models that faithfully replicate this multifaceted pathology are indispensable for comprehensive PD research. This study aims to investigate if depressive-like behaviour, prominent in up to 40% of PD patients (Laux, 2022), emerges in the bilateral human mutated alpha-synuclein (A53T) rat model of PD.40 adult Sprague-Dawley rats were bilaterally injected into substantia nigra with either empty AAV1/2 vector or AAV1/2-expressing human mutated A53T-alpha synuclein. (Paxinos & Watson, 2013). Sucrose preference (Liu et al., 2018) and novelty suppressed feeding (Blasco-Serra et al., 2017) tests were performed on week 3 and week 6 post virus injection. Immunofluorescence staining for TH+, alpha-synuclein, DAPI was done to confirm neurodegeneration on week 6.Both groups of rats showed a preference for the 20% sucrose solution with no statistically significant difference between groups on week 3 (p=0.313, t test). Statistically significantly lower preference for sucrose was exhibited on week 6 by alpha-synuclein expressing animals compared to control group (p=0.0099). Reduced responsiveness to highly palatable food consumption has also been observed in novelty suppressed feeding test, but statistically significant differences between A53T and EV have not been reached at any timepoint.Our findings suggest that the A53T-alpha synuclein rat model manifests depressive-like behavior, evidenced by diminished responsiveness to palatable stimuli. This model holds promise for investigating non-motor pathologies associated with PD.