Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21201, USA.
J Neurosci. 2010 Feb 24;30(8):2911-7. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0054-10.2010.
The amygdala is critical for associating predictive cues with primary rewarding and aversive outcomes. This is particularly evident in tasks in which information about expected outcomes is required for normal responding. Here we used a pavlovian overexpectation task to test whether outcome signaling by amygdala might also be necessary for changing those representations in the face of unexpected outcomes. Rats were trained to associate several different cues with a food reward. After learning, two of the cues were presented together, in compound, followed by the same reward. Before each compound training session, rats received infusions of 2,3-dioxo-6-nitro-1,2,3,4-tetrahydrobenzo[f]quinoxaline-7-sulfonamide or saline into either the basolateral (ABL) or central nucleus (CeN) of amygdala. We found that infusions into CeN abolished the normal decline in responding to the compounded cue in a later probe test, whereas infusions into ABL had no effect. These results are inconsistent with the proposal that signaling of information about expected outcomes by ABL contributes to learning, at least in this setting, and instead implicate the CeN in this process, perhaps attributable to the hypothesized involvement of this area in attention and variations in stimulus processing.
杏仁核对于将预测线索与主要的奖励和厌恶结果联系起来至关重要。这在需要有关预期结果的信息才能正常反应的任务中尤为明显。在这里，我们使用条件性超预期任务来测试杏仁核的结果信号是否对于在面对意外结果时改变这些表示也很重要。大鼠被训练将几种不同的线索与食物奖励联系起来。学习后，两个线索一起呈现，然后是相同的奖励。在每次复合训练之前，大鼠接受 2,3-二氧代-6-硝基-1,2,3,4-四氢苯并[f]喹喔啉-7-磺胺或生理盐水到杏仁核的外侧核（ABL）或中央核（CeN）的输注。我们发现，CeN 中的输注消除了在稍后的探针测试中对复合线索的正常反应下降，而 ABL 中的输注没有影响。这些结果与 ABL 发出有关预期结果的信息有助于学习的提议不一致，至少在这种情况下，而是暗示 CeN 参与了这个过程，这可能归因于该区域在注意力和刺激处理变化中的假设参与。
