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Developmental change in the access to olfactory memories.

D Kucharski1, W G Hall

  • 1Department of Psychology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27706.

Behavioral Neuroscience
|June 1, 1988
PubMed
Summary

Young rat pups learn odors unilaterally, but this ability is lost after the first week. Brain connections mature, enabling bilateral recall, but can be surgically reinstated for unilateral memory.

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Developmental Neuroscience
  • Olfactory Learning

Background:

  • Early-life olfactory learning can be lateralized to one brain hemisphere in rat pups.
  • This unilateral learning is transient, observed only during the first postnatal week.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the developmental trajectory of olfactory memory lateralization in rat pups.
  • To determine the role of olfactory commissural fibers in the shift from unilateral to bilateral recall.

Main Methods:

  • Training 6-day-old and older rat pups to prefer a specific odor by stimulating a single naris.
  • Surgically sectioning olfactory commissural fibers before or after odor training in older pups.
  • Testing odor recall using both trained and untrained nares.

Main Results:

  • Unilateral odor learning was confirmed in 6-day-old pups but absent in older pups, who showed bilateral recall.
  • Sectioning olfactory commissural fibers before training in older pups reinstated infantlike unilateral learning.
  • Sectioning these fibers after training also resulted in unilateral preferences, indicating reliance on contralateral memory access.

Conclusions:

  • The maturation of olfactory commissural fibers during the first postnatal week underlies the transition from unilateral to bilateral olfactory memory.
  • These fibers are crucial for accessing unilaterally stored memories from the contralateral olfactory bulb.

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