Systems neuroscienceUnconditioned stimulus pathways to the amygdala: Effects of lesions of the posterior intralaminar thalamus on foot-shock-induced c-Fos expression in the subdivisions of the lateral amygdala
Section snippets
Subjects
All animal experiments were carried out in accordance with the National Institutes of Health Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (NIH Publications No. 80-23, revised 1996) and were approved by the New York University Animal Care and Use Committee. The number of animals used was the minimum judged necessary to obtain significant results, and appropriate measures were taken to minimize their suffering, especially during surgery. Studies were performed using adult male Sprague–Dawley
Unilateral MGm/PIN lesions had no behavioral effect on foot-shock-induced freezing
Unilateral lesions of the MGm/PIN complex were included in this study when they encompassed the MGm and the PIN. The largest and smallest lesions are shown in Fig. 1. In the largest cases, damaged areas partially included the suprageniculate nucleus, the anterior pretectal nucleus and the posterior thalamic nucleus group. The unilateral thalamic lesions did not affect the freezing behavior elicited by the foot shocks (Fig. 2), as revealed by a two-way ANOVA, with shock number (shocks 1–5) as a
Discussion
The present study provides, as far as we know, the first evidence showing that foot shock (the most common aversive stimulus in fear conditioning) induces a heterogeneous expression of c-Fos in the LA both in terms of the LA subnuclei and also regarding the anteroposterior extent of this structure. Previous studies of the expression of c-Fos after foot shock produced contradictory findings. Campeau et al. (1991) found that foot shock induced a significant elevation of c-fos mRNA in the amygdala
Conclusion
In summary, the US (foot shock) induces neuronal activation (c-Fos expression) in the three subnuclei of the LA. This induction shows a regionalization in the antero-posterior axis, being significant in the intermediate levels of the DL and in the anterior levels of the VM. In contrast, the VL subnucleus shows homogeneous c-Fos induction throughout. Lesions of the MGm/PIN thalamic complex suggest that its projections to the LA are involved in the foot-shock-induced c-Fos expression.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported in part by National Institutes of Health grants R01 MH46516, R37 MH38774, P50 MH58911, and K05 MH067048, by a grant of the W.M. Keck Foundation to New York University. E.L. received a Fulbright-Spanish Ministry of Education and Science postdoctoral fellowship. The authors are grateful to Dr. Fernando Martínez-García for reading and commenting on the manuscript, and to Guillermo Ayala (Dept. of Statistics, Univ. of Valencia) for his help with statistics.
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