Effects of scopolamine on social transmission of food preferences

Abstract

Rats must forage adaptively, choose safe foods, and avoid poisonous foods. The social transmission of food preference paradigm is useful to study learning and memory. Several studies have found that the associations formed in that paradigms are examples of declarative memory. Scopolamine induces interference in learning and consolidation of memories in diverse tasks. In this experiment, we evaluated the effect of one dose of the drug on the memory formed in several trials of this paradigm. In three groups, we evaluated the effect of administering saline and scopolamine with a control group that received no treatment. Results showed that the dose of scopolamine interfered with the consolidation of a series of trials in the transmission of preference. We discussed the effect in relation to different studies that used different tasks. The results support that scopolamine impaired consolidation on social transmission of food preference.