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Public release date: 19-Apr-2005
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Hugh T. Blair, Virginia K. Huynh, Vanessa T. Vaz, John Van, Reekesh R. Patel, Amit K. Hiteshi, Jennie E. Lee, and Jason W. Tarpley
Rodents "freeze" when a neural conditioned stimulus (CS), such as a tone, is paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US), such as an eyelid shock. This pavlovian fear conditioning requires the amygdala, particularly the lateral nucleus of the amygdala (LA), where the CS–US association may be stored. Bilateral amygdala lesions cause severe impairment of fear conditioning, but the left and right amygdala can independently cause mild impairment. Blair et al. now report that the amygdala fear circuitry can be exclusively one-sided, depending on the site of the US.
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