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The Journal of Neuroscience, November 15, 2001, 21(22):9018-9026
Lesions of the Basolateral Amygdala Disrupt Selective Aspects of
Reinforcer Representation in Rats
Pam
Blundell1,
Geoffrey
Hall1, and
Simon
Killcross2
1 Department of Psychology, University of York,
Heslington, York, YO10 5DD United Kingdom, and 2 School of
Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3YG, United Kingdom
The amygdala is known to play a role in learning about
motivationally significant events. We investigated this role further by
examining the effects of excitotoxic lesions of the basolateral amygdala on the ability of rats to use instrumental outcomes to direct
responding (the differential outcomes effect) and on the ability of
Pavlovian cues to modulate instrumental performance based on shared
outcomes (reinforcer-selective Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer). We
found that basolateral amygdala (BLA) lesions did not affect the
ability of rats to learn a basic instrumental conditional discrimination, but did disrupt the ability of differential outcomes to
facilitate acquisition. In Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer, BLA
lesions did not disrupt the basic enhancement of instrumental performance but did abolish the reinforcer specificity of that enhancement. These results suggest that the BLA is involved in the
representation of the sensory aspects of motivationally significant events.
Key words:
appetitive conditioning; basolateral amygdala; reward; reinforcement; Pavlovian; instrumental
Copyright © 2001 Society for Neuroscience 0270-6474/01/21229018-09$05.00/0
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