Plastic and stimulus-specific coding of salient events in the central amygdala.

ABSTRACT: The central amygdala (CeA) is implicated in a range of mental processes including attention, motivation, memory formation and extinction and in behaviours driven by either aversive or appetitive stimuli^1-7. How it participates in these divergent functions remains elusive. Here we show that somatostatin-expressing (Sst⁺) CeA neurons, which mediate much of CeA functions^3,6,8-10, generate experience-dependent and stimulus-specific evaluative signals essential for learning. The population responses of these neurons in mice encode the identities of a wide range of salient stimuli, with the responses of separate subpopulations selectively representing the stimuli that have contrasting valences, sensory modalities or physical properties (for example, shock and wat

SUBMITTER: Yang T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10665639 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature