Effects of glutamate and its metabotropic receptors class 1 antagonist in appetitive taste memory formation.

Cortical glutamatergic activity is known to be important for memory formation in different learning tasks. For example, glutamate activity in the insular cortex plays an important role in aversive taste memory formation by signaling the unconditioned stimulus. However, the role of glutamate in the insular cortex in appetitive taste learning has remained poorly studied. Therefore, we considered the function of glutamate in attenuation of neophobia, a model of appetitive taste recognition memory. For this purpose, we performed infusions of vehicle, glutamate, a specific mGluR1 antagonist (AIDA) or a combination of glutamate and AIDA at 0 or 30 min, and glutamate or vehicle at 60 min after novel saccharin consumption. Glutamate infusion impaired appetitive taste recognition memory when infused at 0 or 30 min, whereas, AIDA infusions produced enhanced appetitive memory at the same infusion times. Furthermore, when glutamate and AIDA were infused together no effect on attenuation of neophobia was observed. As opposed to shorter infusion times, the administration of glutamate 60 min after the presentation of the saccharin consumption was ineffective in the impairment of the appetitive taste memory. These results are discussed in view of the effect of glutamate and its mGluR1 during the appetitive taste recognition memory formation in the insular cortex.