
Imagine that you are eating a Granny apple under a red parasol on the terrace of a public garden. The next day you eat another Granny apple at home in your kitchen, but soon afterwards find yourself ill. The next time you go back to the public garden, you avoid sitting under that red parasol. While there may not seem to be a link between the parasol and the fact that you were ill, there actually is! This is an example of the mediated learning process, and researchers from INRA and INSERM have just identified the brain mechanism involved in it. Their results, published online on 30 August 2018 in Neuron, show that cannabinoid receptors in the hippocampus play a key role in establishing these types of associations.