Imprinting in the scanner: fMRI memories of mother in awake newborns

Filial imprinting has been used as a powerful paradigm to investigate the neurobiological impact of early learning on lifelong behaviors. When a visually naïve chick is exposed to a conspicuous object, it learns its characteristics and subsequently recognizes and selectively approaches this object (usually the mother hen). While the initial phases of memory acquisition have been unraveled, imprinting memories' long-term storage and retrieval components are still unknown. Here, we implemented a novel functional MRI approach in awake newly hatched chicks to identify the long-term storage of imprinting memories within a broad network encompassing the hippocampal formation, the medial striatum, the arcopallium, and the prefrontal-like nidopallium caudolaterale. These results provide the first example of non-invasive brain imaging in a newborn vertebrate.