L. Cahill et al., The basolateral amygdala complex is involved with, but is not necessary for, rapid acquisition of Pavlovian 'fear conditioning', EUR J NEURO, 12(8), 2000, pp. 3044-3050
A major hypothesis about lateral/basolateral amygdala complex (BLC) functio
n in memory proposes that the BLC is the site where conditioned stimulus-un
conditioned stimulus (CS-US) associations are formed and permanently stored
during Pavlovian 'fear conditioning.' Thus, according to this hypothesis,
the BLC is necessary for the acquisition and expression of both discrete-cu
e and contextual Pavlovian fear conditioning. This hypothesis clearly requi
res that animals with complete lesions of the BLC be completely unable to a
cquire Pavlovian fear conditioning. In this experiment, distribution of tra
ining and testing trials over three sessions revealed that rats with comple
te BLC lesions rapidly acquired a contextual CS-US association (as assessed
with freezing behaviour), although their performance, as expected, did not
equal that of sham operated controls. Irrespective of the nature of the fr
eezing deficit relative to controls, the learning in the BLC-lesioned rats
strongly indicates that Pavlovian fear conditioning CS-US associations can
be rapidly acquired in the absence of the BLC, and that the BLC cannot ther
efore be necessary for their acquisition.