Although much has been learned about the role of the amygdala in Pavlovian fear conditioning, relatively little is known about an involvement of this structure in more complex aversive learning, such as acquisition of an active avoidance reaction. In the present study, rats with a pretraining injection of the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist, 2-amino-5-phosphonopentanoic acid (AP...

Intracellular recordings were obtained from the basolateral amygdala in in vitro rat brain slice preparations to examine whether gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)B receptors are altered after in vivo kindling-induced epileptogenesis. Stimulating the stria terminalis evoked excitatory (EPSPs) and inhibitory (IPSPs) postsynaptic potentials in control neurons, and epileptiform bursting or enhanced EP...

AA amygdala, anterior nucleus AAF anterior auditory field ABm basomedial nucleus of the amygdala ACe central nucleus of the amygdala AD anterior part of the DCN AES anterior ectosylvian area aes anterior ectosylvian sulcus AI primary auditory cortex AlP anterolateral periolivary nucleus APt anterior pretectum AII second auditory cortex AM anterior medial nucleus AV anterior ventral thalamic nuc...

Working memory is a vital cognitive capacity without which meaningful thinking and logical reasoning would be impossible. Working memory is integrally dependent upon prefrontal cortex and it has been suggested that voluntary control of working memory, enabling sustained emotion inhibition, was the crucial step in the evolution of modern humans. Consistent with this, recent fMRI studies suggest ...

Norepinephrine is released in the amygdala following negatively arousing learning conditions. This event initiates a cascade of changes including the transcription of activity-regulated cytoskeleton-associated protein (Arc) expression, an early-immediate gene associated with memory encoding. Recent evidence suggests that the valence of emotionally laden encounters may generate lateralized, as o...

UNLABELLED The neurobiology of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) remains unclear. Intense stress promotes PTSD, which has been associated with exaggerated startle and deficient sensorimotor gating. Here, we examined the long-term sequelae of a rodent model of traumatic stress (repeated predator exposure) on amygdala systems that modulate startle and prepulse inhibition (PPI), an operational...

Pavlovian fear conditioning is highly conserved across species, providing a powerful model of aversive learning. In rodents, fear memory is stored and reactivated under the influence of the amygdala. There is no evidence for an equivalent mechanism in primates, and an opposite mechanism is proposed whereby primate amygdala contributes only to an initial phase of aversive learning, subsequently ...

The amplitude of the acoustic startle response is reliably enhanced when elicited in the presence of bright light (light-enhanced startle) or in the presence of cues previously paired with shock (fear-potentiated startle). Light-enhanced startle appears to reflect an unconditioned response to an anxiogenic stimulus, whereas fear-potentiated startle reflects a conditioned response to a fear-elic...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder with a strong genetic basis. Although anxiety is a common major psychiatric condition in ASD, the underlying mechanisms of the anxiety are poorly understood. In individuals with ASD, evidence indicates a structural abnormality in the amygdala, a key component involved in anxiety and social behavior. Microglia...

An impressive amount of evidence from many different laboratories using a variety of experimental techniques indicates that the amygdala plays a crucial role in the acquisition, consolidation and retention or expression of conditioned fear. Electrophysiological data are beginning to detail the transmitters and inter-amygdala connections that transmit information to, within, and out of the amygd...