Cognitive task performance after lidocaine-induced inactivation of different sites within the basolateral amygdala and dorsal striatum

To determine whether discrete components of amygdaloid and striatal memory systems could interact to guide behavior in a radial arm maze, conditioned cue preference (CCP) and win-stay accuracy were examined after lidocaine in activation of either the rostral (rBLA) or caudal (cBLA) basolateral amygda la, the lateral (IDST) or medial (mDST) dorsal striatum, or a control site in rats. CCP expression was blocked only after rBLA or cBLA inactivation. I DST inactivation prevented attainment of criteria win-stay performance, whe reas rBLA and mDST inactivation delayed it. Control site inactivation did n ot influence performance in either task. These findings suggest that the am ygdala works independently of other memory systems to regulate learned resp onses in the CCP task, the rBLA may work cooperatively with the IDST to gui de behavior in the win-stay task, and the mDST is less critical than the ID ST for attaining criteria performance in the win-stay task.