Maintenance of Blood Pressure in Emotional Context-based Autonomic Switching by the Central Nucleus of the Amygdala in Rats
Proper autonomic control is necessary in making appropriate decisions and actions, but neuronal mechanisms for this function are yet to be determined. Here we show that the amygdala plays a role in autonomic cardiovascular tuning in a dynamically changing environment. We recorded blood pressure and heart rate of head-restrained rats during appetitive and aversive classical conditioning tasks. Rats learned varying associations between conditioned stimuli and unconditioned stimuli in three types of contexts: appetitive, neutral, and aversive blocks. Blood pressure and heart rate in the appetitive block gradually increased after reward-predicting cues, followed by a vigorously increased response to the actual reward. The predictive response was found to be significantly higher than the responses in the neutral and aversive blocks. Blood pressure and heart rate responses to the air puff-predicting cue in the aversive block were significantly lower than that of the responses in the neutral block. Pharmacological blockade of the amygdala has significantly decreased reward-predictive pressor responses in the latter phase, but not in the initial phase of context change. Cardiovascular responses are thus adaptively tuned by positive and negative emotional stimuli, and the central nucleus of the amygdala likely assists in maintaining pressor response tuning based on emotional context.
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Posted 24 Nov, 2020
Maintenance of Blood Pressure in Emotional Context-based Autonomic Switching by the Central Nucleus of the Amygdala in Rats
Posted 24 Nov, 2020
Proper autonomic control is necessary in making appropriate decisions and actions, but neuronal mechanisms for this function are yet to be determined. Here we show that the amygdala plays a role in autonomic cardiovascular tuning in a dynamically changing environment. We recorded blood pressure and heart rate of head-restrained rats during appetitive and aversive classical conditioning tasks. Rats learned varying associations between conditioned stimuli and unconditioned stimuli in three types of contexts: appetitive, neutral, and aversive blocks. Blood pressure and heart rate in the appetitive block gradually increased after reward-predicting cues, followed by a vigorously increased response to the actual reward. The predictive response was found to be significantly higher than the responses in the neutral and aversive blocks. Blood pressure and heart rate responses to the air puff-predicting cue in the aversive block were significantly lower than that of the responses in the neutral block. Pharmacological blockade of the amygdala has significantly decreased reward-predictive pressor responses in the latter phase, but not in the initial phase of context change. Cardiovascular responses are thus adaptively tuned by positive and negative emotional stimuli, and the central nucleus of the amygdala likely assists in maintaining pressor response tuning based on emotional context.
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Figure 2
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