Facilitation of taste memory acquisition by experiencing previous novel taste is protein-synthesis dependent

Very little is known about the biological and molecular mechanisms that determine the effect of previous experience on implicit learning tasks. In the present study, we first defined weak and strong taste inputs according to measurements in the behavioral paradigm known as latent inhibition of conditioned taste aversion. We then demonstrated that a strong novel taste input facilitated acquisition of the memory of subsequent weak taste input in inverse correlation with the time interval between the inputs. However, not only was a strong taste input unable to rescue an immediately subsequent strong taste input when the gustatory cortex was under the influence of the protein-synthesis inhibitor, anisomycin, but the effect of the interaction was to reduce the variation among individual taste memories. Taken together, these results demonstrate that taste memory facilitation, induced by previously experiencing a different unimodal taste input, depended on time, novelty, and directionality. Moreover, the results imply that learning is enhanced on the level of acquisition but not of molecular consolidation.