Emergence of long-term memory for conditioned aversion in the rat fetus

Pregnant rats were subjected to garlic essential oil as the conditioned stimulus and 45 min later to LiCl as the unconditioned stimulus either on embryonic Days 15 and 16 (E15 and E16) or on 18 and 19 (E18 and E19). Control dams received only garlic, LiCl, or water. Progenies were tested on garlic drinking 6 weeks after the exposure to the stimuli via the mothers. In the E18 to 19 group, rats that were exposed to paired garlic-LiCl expressed a significant aversion for garlic. In the E15 to 16 group, no significant differences appeared between subgroups. These results confirm that an associative memory can be established before birth and suggests that this ability potentially emerges in a short time window of 3 days at the end of gestation. Moreover, it appears that a long-term memory can be acquired in utero and retained to be expressed postnatally when animals are autonomous.