Prenatal choline availability alters the context sensitivity of Pavlovian conditioning in adult rats.

The effects of prenatal choline availability on Pavlovian conditioning were assessed in adult male rats (3-4 mo). Neither supplementation nor deprivation of prenatal choline affected the acquisition and extinction of simple Pavlovian conditioned excitation, or the acquisition and retardation of conditioned inhibition. However, prenatal choline availability significantly altered the contextual control of these learned behaviors. Both control and choline-deprived rats exhibited context specificity of conditioned excitation as exhibited by a loss in responding when tested in an alternate context after conditioning; in contrast, choline-supplemented rats showed no such effect. When switched to a different context following extinction, however, both choline-supplemented and control rats showed substantial contextual control of responding, whereas choline-deficient rats did not. These data support the view that configural associations that rely on hippocampal function are selectively sensitive to prenatal manipulations of dietary choline during prenatal development.