Recent studies indicate that the lateral subdivision of the central amygdala (CeL) is essential for fear learning. Specifically, fear conditioning induces cell-type-specific synaptic plasticity in CeL neurons that is required for the storage of fear memories. The CeL also controls fear expression by gating the activity of the medial subdivision of the central amygdala (CeM), the canonical amygd...

Alcohol dependence is characterized by excessive consumption, loss of control over intake, and the presence of a withdrawal syndrome, including both motivational and physical symptoms. The motivational symptoms, including anxiety, have been hypothesized to be important factors eliciting excessive drinking during abstinence. Previous work has shown that ethanol-dependent rats also display enhanc...

The purpose of this study was to clarify further the site of action in the amygdala as well as functional characteristics of feeding in response to two GABA receptor agonists. Guide cannulae for microinjection were implanted stereotaxically in the rat just above the central nucleus of the amygdala (CNA). Microinjections of 0.05, 0.25, 0.5 or 1.0 nmol muscimol, a GABAA-selective receptor agonist...

The amygdala is critically involved in discriminative avoidance learning. Large lesions of the amygdala block discriminative avoidance learning and abolish cingulothalamic training-induced neuronal activity. These results indicated that amygdalar processing is critical for cingulothalamic plasticity. The larger lesions did not allow differentiation of the specific functioning of various amygdal...

BACKGROUND The antianxiety effects of ethanol appear to be a crucial factor in promoting alcohol intake. Regulation of gene expression by microRNA (miRNA) is an important epigenetic mechanism that affects neuronal pathways and behaviors. We investigated the role of miRNAs underlying the mechanisms of ethanol-induced anxiolysis. METHODS Acute ethanol-induced anxiolysis was measured in adult ra...

In the standard model of pavlovian fear learning, sensory input from neutral and aversive stimuli converge in the lateral nucleus of the amygdala (LA), in which alterations in synaptic transmission encode the association. During fear expression, the LA is thought to engage the central nucleus of the amygdala (CE), which serves as the principal output nucleus for the expression of conditioned fe...

Previous data have consistently demonstrated an inhibitory effect of androgens on stressinduced hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) responses. Several brain regions may influence androgen-mediated inhibition of the HPA axis, including the medial preoptic area. To test the role of the medial preoptic nucleus (MPN) specifically, we examined in highand low-testosterone replaced gonadectomized rat...

introduction: it has been shown that administration of win55,212-2, a cannabinoid receptor agonist, into the basolateral amygdala (bla), dose-dependently increases the thermal latency to withdrawal in the tail-.ick test and decreases pain related behaviors in both phases of the formalin test. recent human and animal imaging data suggest that the nucleus accumbens (nac) is an important neural su...