AUTHOR=Stone Martha E., Maffei Arianna , Fontanini Alfredo TITLE=Amygdala Stimulation Evokes Time-Varying Synaptic Responses in the Gustatory Cortex of Anesthetized Rats JOURNAL=Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience VOLUME=5 YEAR=2011 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/integrative-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnint.2011.00003 DOI=10.3389/fnint.2011.00003 ISSN=1662-5145 ABSTRACT=
Gustatory stimuli are characterized by a specific hedonic value; they are either palatable or aversive. Hedonic value, along with other psychological dimensions of tastes, is coded in the time-course of gustatory cortex (GC) neural responses and appears to emerge via top-down modulation by the basolateral amygdala (BLA). While the importance of BLA in modulating gustatory cortical function has been well established, the nature of its input onto GC neurons is largely unknown. Somewhat conflicting results from extracellular recordings point to either excitatory or inhibitory effects. Here, we directly test the hypothesis that BLA can evoke time-varying – excitatory and inhibitory – synaptic responses in GC using