Shanghai Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics (Ministry of Education), Institute of Brain Functional Genomics, School of Life Science, NYU-ECNU Institute of Brain and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.
Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, NY, USA.
Mol Psychiatry. 2020 Mar;25(3):640-654. doi: 10.1038/s41380-019-0599-6. Epub 2019 Nov 22.
Norepinephrine (NE) plays a central role in the acquisition of aversive learning via actions in the lateral nucleus of the amygdala (LA) [1, 2]. However, the function of NE in expression of aversively-conditioned responses has not been established. Given the role of the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) in the expression of such behaviors [3-5], and the presence of NE axons projections in this brain nucleus [6], we assessed the effects of NE activity in the CeA on behavioral expression using receptor-specific pharmacology and cell- and projection-specific chemogenetic manipulations. We found that inhibition and activation of locus coeruleus (LC) neurons decreases and increases freezing to aversively conditioned cues, respectively. We then show that locally inhibiting or activating LC terminals in CeA is sufficient to achieve this bidirectional modulation of defensive reactions. These findings support the hypothesis that LC projections to CeA are critical for the expression of defensive responses elicited by conditioned threats.
去甲肾上腺素（NE）通过在杏仁外侧核（LA）中的作用在获得厌恶性学习中起核心作用[1,2]。然而，NE 在表达厌恶性条件反应中的作用尚未确定。鉴于杏仁中央核（CeA）在表达此类行为中的作用[3-5]，以及 NE 轴突投射在该脑核中的存在[6]，我们使用受体特异性药理学和细胞和投射特异性化学遗传操作来评估 CeA 中 NE 活性对行为表达的影响。我们发现，抑制和激活蓝斑核（LC）神经元分别减少和增加对厌恶性条件线索的冻结。然后，我们表明，在 CeA 中局部抑制或激活 LC 末梢足以实现防御反应的这种双向调节。这些发现支持这样的假设，即 LC 投射到 CeA 对于由条件威胁引起的防御反应的表达是至关重要的。
