Rearing with artificially scented mothers attenuates conditioned odor aversion in adulthood but not its amygdala dependency.

Yannick Sevelinges, Frédéric Lévy, Anne-Marie Mouly, Guillaume Ferreira
Behavioural Brain Research. 2009-03-01; 198(2): 313-320
DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2008.11.003

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1. Behav Brain Res. 2009 Mar 17;198(2):313-20. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2008.11.003. Epub
2008 Nov 11.

Rearing with artificially scented mothers attenuates conditioned odor aversion in
adulthood but not its amygdala dependency.

Sevelinges Y(1), Lévy F, Mouly AM, Ferreira G.

Author information:
(1)Laboratoire de Comportement, Neurobiologie et Adaptation, UMR 6175,
INRA-CNRS-Université de Tours-Haras Nationaux, F-37380 Nouzilly, France.

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether neonatal odor experience
associated with the mother affects food avoidance learning and basolateral
amygdala (BLA) involvement in adulthood. Odorization of mother’s nipples with
banana or almond solutions from birth to weaning resulted in an impairment at
adulthood of conditioned odor aversion (COA). These effects were specific to the
early-experienced odor since no deficit was observed for COA to a novel odor
(Experiment 1). In contrast, mere exposure to an odor in the home cage instead of
on mother’s nipples induced no deficit in COA at adulthood (Experiment 2).
Finally, transitory inactivation of the BLA during COA acquisition in adult
animals impaired the normal COA of naïve animals but also the attenuated COA of
rats with early odor experience on the mother (Experiment 3). These results
demonstrate that neonatal odor experience associated with the mother promotes the
acquisition of appetitive memories which can interfere with food avoidance
learning in adulthood. They also suggest that this early experience did not
modify the BLA involvement in learned aversion.

DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2008.11.003
PMID: 19041900 [Indexed for MEDLINE]

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