Nuclear disconnection within the amygdala reveals a direct pathway to fear. Academic Article

abstract

• It is widely believed that a descending serial circuit consisting of neural projections from the basolateral complex (BLA) to the central nucleus (CEA) of the amygdala mediates fear expression. Here we directly test this hypothesis and show that disconnecting the BLA and CEA with asymmetric neurotoxic lesions after Pavlovian fear conditioning in rats completely abolishes the expression of conditional freezing. These results demonstrate that neural projections from the BLA to CEA are essential for the expression of learned fear responses.

authors

• Maren, Stephen

published proceedings

• Learn Mem

altmetric score

• 3

author list (cited authors)

• Jimenez, S. A., & Maren, S.

citation count

• 36

complete list of authors

• Jimenez, Stephanie A||Maren, Stephen

publication date

• December 2009

publisher

• Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory  Publisher

published in

• Learning and Memory  Journal

keywords

• Acoustic Stimulation
• Amygdala
• Analysis Of Variance
• Animals
• Avoidance Learning
• Behavior, Animal
• Conditioning, Classical
• Electroshock
• Excitatory Amino Acid Agonists
• Fear
• Freezing Reaction, Cataleptic
• Functional Laterality
• Gene Expression Regulation
• Male
• N-Methylaspartate
• Nerve Net
• Proto-Oncogene Proteins C-fos
• Rats
• Rats, Long-Evans
• Silver Staining

PubMed Central ID

• 19933881

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

• 10.1101/lm.1607109

start page

• 766

end page

• 768

volume

• 16

issue

• 12

URL

• http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/lm.1607109