Auditory-evoked spike firing in the lateral amygdala and Pavlovian fear conditioning: mnemonic code or fear bias? Academic Article

abstract

• Amygdala neuroplasticity has emerged as a candidate substrate for Pavlovian fear memory. By this view, conditional stimulus (CS)-evoked activity represents a mnemonic code that initiates the expression of fear behaviors. However, a fear state may nonassociatively enhance sensory processing, biasing CS-evoked activity in amygdala neurons. Here we describe experiments that dissociate auditory CS-evoked spike firing in the lateral amygdala (LA) and both conditional fear behavior and LA excitability in rats. We found that the expression of conditional freezing and increased LA excitability was neither necessary nor sufficient for the expression of conditional increases in CS-evoked spike firing. Rather, conditioning-related changes in CS-evoked spike firing were solely determined by the associative history of the CS. Thus, our data support a model in which associative activity in the LA encodes fear memory and contributes to the expression of learned fear behaviors.

authors

• Maren, Stephen

published proceedings

• Neuron

altmetric score

• 1

author list (cited authors)

• Goosens, K. A., Hobin, J. A., & Maren, S.

citation count

• 113

complete list of authors

• Goosens, Ki A||Hobin, Jennifer A||Maren, Stephen

publication date

• December 2003

publisher

• Elsevier  Publisher

published in

• Neuron  Journal

keywords

• Action Potentials
• Amygdala
• Animals
• Conditioning, Classical
• Evoked Potentials, Auditory
• Fear
• Male
• Neuronal Plasticity
• Rats
• Rats, Long-Evans

PubMed Central ID

• 14659099

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

• 10.1016/s0896-6273(03)00728-1

start page

• 1013

end page

• 1022

volume

• 40

issue

• 5

URL

• http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0896-6273(03)00728-1