Behavioural neuroscienceContributions of the amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex to incentive cue responding
Section snippets
Subjects
Thirty-two male Long-Evans rats (∼350 g on arrival) were individually housed in a colony room maintained on a 12-h light/dark cycle. All experiments occurred during the light portion of the cycle. After receipt, rats were allowed at least 1 week of ad libitum food and water, followed by 1 week of restricted food and water before training. Animals were fed 13 g of BioServ (Frenchtown, NJ, USA) formula F-173 pellets (1 g each) and 30 ml of water per day for the duration of the experiments.
The role of the BLA in reward-seeking behaviors
Inactivating the BLA with GABAA and GABAB agonists (M/B) impaired cue responding behavior (Fig. 1). M/B induced a dose-dependent decrease in DS response ratio (F3,21=22.77, P<0.0001; Fig. 1A). Responding to the NS was also reduced by BLA inactivation (F3,21=12.31, P<0.0001; Fig. 1C). Although the DS response latency tended to increase following BLA inactivation, there was no significant difference among groups (F3,21=1.58, P=0.23; Fig. 1B). The rate of uncued responding on the active lever was
Discussion
To obtain reward in the DS task, animals must perform an operant response during DS presentation. During the long (30 s) intervals between cue presentations, and during NS presentation, reward is not available. Previously, we showed that dopamine acting in the NAc is required for animals to respond during the DS (Yun et al 2004a, Yun et al 2004b). However, NAc neurons also inhibit behaviors that animals have learned to suppress in the context of a reward seeking task, as demonstrated by an
Acknowledgments
Funding: State of California/University of California, San Francisco (Alcohol and Substance Abuse Research Program to H.L.F.); National Institutes of Health (DA019473 to S.M.N.); Wheeler Center for the Neurobiology of Addiction. The authors are grateful to Dr. V. Kharazia for histology work.
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Necessity and recruitment of cue-specific neuronal ensembles within the basolateral amygdala during appetitive reversal learning
2022, Neurobiology of Learning and MemoryCitation Excerpt :Indeed, previous studies have shown an intact BLA is needed to access the value of the learned cue in order to appropriately update it when the outcome is changed and alter behavioral responding (as reviewed in (Wassum & Izquierdo, 2015)). The BLA encodes the value of the cues during learning (Cole et al., 2013; Esber & Holland, 2014; Parkes & Balleine, 2013; Piette et al., 2012; Schoenbaum et al., 1999; Tye & Janak, 2007; Uwano, Nishijo, Ono, & Tamura, 1995) and is involved in appetitive cue discrimination (Ambroggi, Ishikawa, Fields, & Nicola, 2008; Ishikawa et al., 2008) and reversal learning (Churchwell, Morris, Heurtelou, & Kesner, 2009). However, several studies have shown the BLA may not be critical for initial acquisition of cue value learning (Balleine, Killcross, & Dickinson, 2003; Corbit & Balleine, 2005; Hatfield et al., 1996; Holland, Petrovich, & Gallagher, 2002; Parkinson, Robbins, & Everitt, 2000), but it is critical to encode and assess the representation of the learned associations to alter subsequent behavioral motivation and learning (Blundell et al., 2001; Corbit & Balleine, 2005; Coutureau, Marchand, & Di Scala, 2009; Everitt et al., 2003; Galarce, McDannald, & Holland, 2010; Hatfield et al., 1996; Holland et al., 2002; Holland & Petrovich, 2005; Johnson, Gallagher, & Holland, 2009; Ostlund & Balleine, 2008; Petrovich, 2013; Setlow et al., 2002; Tye & Janak, 2007; Wassum & Izquierdo, 2015; Hoang & Sharpe, 2021; Fisher et al., 2020).
The rodent medial prefrontal cortex and associated circuits in orchestrating adaptive behavior under variable demands
2022, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral ReviewsCitation Excerpt :Interestingly, disconnecting the PL-NAcC circuit does not impact cued reinstatement of sucrose-seeking, bringing into question the generalizability of the proposed role of the PL-NAcC in initiating drug-seeking to natural reward-seeking. However, in a study by Ishikawa et al. (2008a,b), pharmacological inactivation of the PL was found to abolish firing in the NAcC during sucrose-seeking under the control of a discriminative stimulus. Furthermore, optogenetic activation of PL inputs to the NAc has been shown to enhance acquisition of conditioned sucrose-seeking while inhibition reduces conditioned sucrose-seeking (Otis et al., 2017).