The social transmission of food preference task (STFP) is a natural form of memory in which a rat learns what foods to eat by associating the smell of an odorized food with a conspecific’s breath, and consequently prefers that food. Long term retention and consolidation of this type of learning is dependent on the hippocampus. Recently, Countryman et al. (SFN 2001) demonstrated c-fos activation in the hippocampus during the acquisition of the STFP. The present study uses c-fos activation to identify the neural system involved in recall of the trained food following STFP. Initially, all subjects were exposed to demonstrator rats that had eaten thyme scented rat chow. Two days later, the experimental group was tested with a choice between thyme and ginger scented chow, whereas control subjects were tested with basil versus ginger scented chow. Compared to controls, there was significantly greater c-fos activation in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OF) in experimental subjects. In addition, there was a tren...