Archival ReportSidman Instrumental Avoidance Initially Depends on Lateral and Basal Amygdala and Is Constrained by Central Amygdala-Mediated Pavlovian Processes
Section snippets
Subjects
Male Sprague–Dawley rats (Hilltop Labs, Scottdale, Pennsylvania) initially weighing 250–300 g were individually housed in plastic Nalgene cages on a 12-hour light–dark cycle in a temperature-controlled room (22°C). Ad libitum food and water were available throughout the experiment. All procedures were performed in accordance with National Institutes of Health's guidelines and were approved by the New York University Animal Care and Use Committee.
Surgery
Rats were anesthetized with ketamine and xylazine
Histology
The percentage of combined bilateral damage for each amygdala nuclei in the experiments are shown in Table 2. The study included 111 rats, 35 of which were part of the sham groups. The remaining 78 rats received bilateral electrolytic lesions aimed at the LA, B, or CE. Of these animals, 33 were excluded because of minimal damage to the target structure or excessive damage to adjacent amygdala nuclei. Animals were excluded from the study if they did not have at least 40% combined bilateral
Discussion
These experiments expand our understanding of amygdala function by identifying roles for specific amygdala nuclei in various aspects of instrumental AA. The main conclusions that we draw are 1) LA and B are critical for the acquisition of instrumental AA, but CE is not; 2) well-trained AA responses become LA- and B-independent and continue to be CE-independent; 3) the CE can constrain AA, possibly by inducing Pavlovian responses such as freezing that compete with AA performance. We now discuss
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