title: Odor-mediated taste learning requires dorsal hippocampus, but not basolateral amygdala activity.
abstract: Mediated learning is a unique cognitive phenomenon in which mental representations of physically absent stimuli enter into associations with directly-activated representations of physically present stimuli. Three experiments investigated the functional physiology of mediated learning involving the use of odor-taste associations. In Experiments 1a and 1b, basolateral amygdala lesions failed to attenuate mediated taste aversion learning. In Experiment 2, dorsal hippocampus inactivation impaired mediated learning, but left direct learning intact. Considered with past studies, the results implicate the dorsal hippocampus in mediated learning generally, and suggest a limit on the importance of the basolateral amygdala.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA. daniel.wheeler@mu.edu
authors.forename: Daniel S
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: Wheeler
authors.forename: Stephen E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.forename: Peter C
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Holland
mesh_terms: D000679:Amygdala / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D001362:Avoidance Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D009812:Odorants; D055696:Olfactory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D051381:Rats; D020318:Rats, Long-Evans; D055697:Taste Perception / Q000502:physiology*