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Amygdala inactivation impairs eyeblink conditioning in developing rats
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Amygdala inactivation impairs eyeblink conditioning in developing rats

Ka H Ng and John H Freeman
Developmental psychobiology, Vol.56(5), pp.999-1007
07/2014
DOI: 10.1002/dev.21180
PMCID: PMC4032812
PMID: 24273052

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Abstract

ABSTRACT The amygdala facilitates acquisition of eyeblink conditioning in adult animals by enhancing conditioned stimulus (CS) inputs to the cerebellum and the unconditioned response circuitry. Ontogenetic changes in amygdala modulation of eyeblink conditioning have not been investigated directly. We examined the effects of amygdala inactivation on the ontogeny of eyeblink conditioning and conditioned freezing in rat pups. Rat pups received bilateral infusions of saline or bupivacaine into the central nucleus of the amygdala before each of the first five training sessions, which consisted of paired CS–US trials on postnatal days (P) 17–19, P21–23, or P24–26. The final session consisted of CS‐alone test trials to assess the effect of amygdala inactivation during training on conditioned freezing. Amygdala inactivation impaired acquisition of eyeblink conditioning in all of the age groups and impaired freezing to the context during the extinction test. The results indicate that the amygdala modulates cerebellar learning as soon as it begins to emerge ontogenetically. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 56: 999–1007, 2014.
 amygdala associative learning eyelid cerebellum rat pup eyeblink conditioning

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