THE INTERNEURONAL FRONTO-AMYGDALAR INTERACTIONS DURING REALIZATION OFTHE CHOICE OF QUALITY OF FOOD REINFORCEMENT IN CATS

In eight cats the appetitive instrumental conditioned reflexes to ligh t were elaborated by the method of ''active choice'' of reinforcement quality: the short-latency bar-pressing responses were reinforced with bread-meat mixture and the delayed responses were reinforced with mea t. The animals differed in behavior strategy: six cats preferred the d elayed pressings (the so-called ''self-control'' group), and two cats preferred the pressings with short delay (the so-called ''impulsive'' group). The multiunit activity in the basolateral amygdala and frontal cortex was recorded by chronically implaned nichrome semimicroelectro des. The interactions of the neighboring neurons in the basolateral am ygdala and the frontal cortex (within the local neuronal networks) and between the amygdalar and cortical neurons (distributed neuronal netw orks of amygdalarfrontal and fronto-amygdalar directions) were estimat ed by means of statistical crosscorrelation analysis of spike trains. The interneuronal crosscorrelations were studied with delays in the ra nge of 0-100 ms. The number of crosscorrelations between the neuronal discharges both in the local and distributed networks was significantl y higher in ''impulsive'' cats, mainly, with delays in the range of 0- 30 ms. In both groups of animals the number of correlations was the hi ghest during omissions of conditioned pressings, i.e., in cases of dif ficult choice of reinforcement. We suggest that the basolateral amygda la, frontal cortex, and amygdalarfrontal distributed neuronal networks are involved in the system of brain structures, which determine the i ndividual features of animal behavior.