Molecular mechanisms of taste-recognition memory

Contextual control of flavor neophobia

“…This result supports the idea that the home cage context favors the establishment of a safe flavor memory trace [19,4]. However, the results do not allow us to identify whether the process responsible for the faster neophobia process is related to the mere familiarization that the animals have received during their long stay at the home cages, or if there exists an additional component that contributes to learned flavor safety.…”

“…An alternative explanation for our results came from a theory considering the development of a flavor safe memory trace by mere exposure to the flavor [4]. Thus, when considering the role played by the animals´ home cages in latent inhibition experiments, De la Casa et al [19] proposed an explanation analogous to the learned safety theory by Rozin and Kalat [9,10] to explain the progressive reduction of conditioned taste aversion observed when the delay between the flavor (the CS) and the gastric malaise (the US) increases.…”

“…The longer the time without aversive consequences after flavor consumption, the stronger the learned safety of such flavor. Bermudez-Rattoni and his group [4,21] suggested a theory based on similar grounds as the learned safety perspective.…”

“…As described by BermudezRattoni [4] animal survival depends, among other factors, on their capacity to differentiate those foods that are edible from those that have toxic components.…”

“…Conversely, if flavor consumption is followed by any kind of negative consequence an aversive conditioning develops [7] that is behaviorally expressed in a sharp reduction of flavor ingestion. Therefore, as a function of the consequences that follow flavor ingestion, a flavor memory trace will be established that is either safe, favoring an increase in consumption of the flavor in future encounters, or aversive, which will result in a reduction or even the complete rejection of flavor consumption [4,8].…”