Biologically predisposed learning and selective associations in amygdalar neurons (original) (raw)

  1. Sabiha K. Barot2,
  2. Jeansok J. Kim1,2 and
  3. Ilene L. Bernstein1,2,3
  4. 1Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195-1525, USA
  5. 2Program in Neurobiology & Behavior, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195-1525, USA

Abstract

Modern views on learning and memory accept the notion of biological constraints—that the formation of association is not uniform across all stimuli. Yet cellular evidence of the encoding of selective associations is lacking. Here, conditioned stimuli (CSs) and unconditioned stimuli (USs) commonly employed in two basic associative learning paradigms, fear conditioning and taste aversion conditioning, were delivered in a manner compatible with a functional cellular imaging technique (_A_rc cellular compartmental analysis of temporal gene transcription by fluorescence in situ hybridization [catFISH]) to identify biological constraints on CS–US convergence at the level of neurons in basolateral amygdala (BLA). Results indicate coincident _A_rc mRNA activation within BLA neurons after CS–US combinations that yield rapid, efficient learning, but not after CS–US combinations that do not.

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