The DOI matches its Crossref record; 51 of the 51 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Amygdala Neurons Differentially Encode Motivation and Reinforcement
Open accessAbstract
Lesion studies demonstrate that the basolateral amygdala complex (BLA) is important for assigning motivational significance to sensory stimuli, but little is known about how this information is encoded. We used in vivo electrophysiology procedures to investigate how the amygdala encodes motivating and reinforcing properties of cues that induce reinstatement of reward-seeking behavior. Two groups of rats were trained to respond to a sucrose reward. The “paired” group was trained with a reward-predictive cue, whereas the “unpaired” group was trained with a randomly presented cue. Both groups underwent identical extinction and reinstatement procedures during which the reward was withheld. The proportion of neurons that were phasically cue responsive during reinstatement was significantly higher in the paired group (46 of 100) than in the unpaired group (8 of 112). Cues that induce reward-seeking behavior can do so by acting as incentives or reinforcers. Distinct populations of neurons responded to the cue in trials in which the cue acted as an incentive, triggering a motivated reward-seeking state, or as a reinforcer, supporting continued instrumental responding. The incentive motivation-encoding population of neurons (34 of 46 cue-responsive neurons; 74%) extinguished in temporal agreement with a decrease in the rate of instrumental responding. The conditioned reinforcement-encoding population of neurons (12 of 46 cue-responsive neurons; 26%) maintained their response for the duration of cue-reinforced instrumental responding. These data demonstrate that separate populations of cue-responsive neurons in the BLA encode the motivating or reinforcing properties of a cue previously associated with a reward.
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“In this way, cues predicting threat are themselves recognized as threatening60 and, likewise, those predicting reward themselves become rewarding61,62.”
From Resolving the neural circuits of anxiety (2015) · cites this paper as [61]
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Items 101–130 of 130
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“…in the BLA in response to reward-predicting cues (Muramoto et al., 1993; Schoenbaum et al., 1998; Paton et al., 2006; Belova et al., 2007; Tye and Janak, 2007; Ambroggi et al., 2008; Tye et al., 2008; Shabel and Janak, 2009; Sangha et al., 2013; Beyeler et al., 2016; Burgos-Robles et…”
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The amygdala regulates infomation flow from the prefrontal cortex to the nucleus accumbens
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GABA Cells in the Central Nucleus of the Amygdala Control Cataplexy
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A critical contribution of a sparse neuronal ensemble in the amygdala central nucleus to extinctionPreprint
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“Neuronal ensembles within the basolateral (BLA) and central (CN) nuclei of the amygdala are suggestive of such an interaction as distinct neuronal subpopulations respond to cues that predict either the presence or absence of appetitive or aversive outcomes (Calu et al., 2010; Esber and Holland, 2014; Esber et al., 201…”
BackgroundBerridge, K. C. (2017) · Faculty Opinions – Post-Publication Peer Review of the Biomedical Literature · doi:10.3410/f.727857297.793537688
Hwang, H., Jin, S., & Lee, I. (2024) · bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · doi:10.1101/2024.02.21.581413
“Notably, both the amygdala and VTA are known to be involved in processing palatability information (Tye and Janak, 2007; Fontanini et al., 2009; Chen et al., 2020), and the amygdala has a subpopulation of neurons dedicated to encoding positive values (Kim et al., 2016; Beyeler et al., 2016).”
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Dopamine projections to the basolateral amygdala enable reward predictionPreprint
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Role of the Amygdala in the Complex Relationship Between Sleep and Anxiety
Grzybowski, F., Kaczmarski, P., Strzelecki, D., Wysokiński, A., Białasiewicz, P., & Gabryelska, A. (2026) · International Journal of Molecular Sciences · doi:10.3390/ijms27177814
“A significant number of studies suggest that the amygdala also plays a vital role in processes such as decision-making, motivational behaviors, and learning [36–38].”
The basolateral amygdala dopamine system shapes dynamic drug seeking statesPreprint
Brickner, M. A., Szot, W. E., Prohofsky, J., Wolff, A. R., Thomas, M. J., & Saunders, B. T. (2026) · bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · doi:10.64898/2026.09.29.755395
Metadata
- Authors
- Tye, K. M., & Janak, P. H.
- Affiliations
- University of California, San Francisco (US)
- Corresponding author
- Janak, Patricia H.
- Venue
- The Journal of Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Society for Neuroscience
- Published
- 2007-04-11
- Volume
- 27
- Issue
- 15
- Pages
- 3937-3945
- ISSN
- 0270-6474 (ISSN-L)
- 1529-2401
- PMC
- PMC6672525
- OpenAlex
- W2076741191
- Cited by
- 130
- References
- 50
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 3 · 2017: 15 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 11 · 2014: 6 · 2013: 7 · 2012: 6
- FWCI
- 3.84
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Keywords
- basolateral amygdala, motivation, reinforcement, incentive motivation, conditioned reinforcement, reinstatement, extinction, reward-seeking behavior, sucrose reward, instrumental responding, neural coding
- MeSH terms
- Action Potentials, Amygdala, Animals, Male, Motivation, Neurons, Reinforcement, Psychology, Reward, Rats, Sprague-Dawley, Rats
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