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1. Defense and the Conditional Reflex
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2. Flight, Locomotion and Image Memory
Page 2

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3. Olfactory Familiarity and Imprinting
Page 3

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Neophobia and Object Memory
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Learning of "Wildness"
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Habituation to Handling
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Learning of Visually-Released Boxing
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Conclusion
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Figure 1
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Bibliography
Page 10

Wild rats, both Rattus norvegicus and Rattus rattus, show defense motivation when confronted with a strange object in a familiar location [6]. Although the original experiments demonstrated motor patterns of freezing in response to the neophobic situations, more recent experiments have demonstrated flight [8] and lunge-and-bite attack [24], i. e., all of the most important defense motor patterns. Although most of the data on neo- phobia have derived from studies on the wild rat by Barnett [6], Chitty [13] and Cowan [18], there are also data from wild mice [67], and Peromyscus [48]. All of these studies have reported that domesticated individuals of these species show much less neophobia.

As far as I know, neophobia has never been studied in order to determine the nature of the memory mechanisms involved, although the memory processes must be quite complex and interesting.

There is some evidence that the basolateral amygdala may be involved in the mechanism of neophobia. Galef [25] made this suggestion in 1970, and it fits with data from Miczek et al.[41] that the basolateral amygdala facilitates defense, but is not involved with olfactory motivating stimuli.