Basolateral amygdala glutamatergic neurons maintain aversive emotional salience

Basolateral amygdala (BLA) glutamatergic neurons serve a well-accepted role in fear conditioning and fear extinction. However, the specific learning processes related to their activity at different times during learning remain poorly understood. We addressed this using behavioral tasks isolating distinct aspects of fear learning in rats. We show that brief optogenetic inhibition of BLA glutamatergic neurons around moments of aversive reinforcement or non-reinforcement causes reductions in the salience of conditioned stimuli, rendering these stimuli less able to be learned about and less able to control fear or safety behaviours. This salience reduction was stimulus-specific, long-lasting, and specific to aversive emotional states - precisely the goals of therapeutic interventions in human anxiety disorders. Our findings identify a core learning process disrupted by brief BLA optogenetic inhibition. They show that a primary function of BLA glutamatergic neurons is to maintain the salience of conditioned stimuli. This is a necessary precursor for these stimuli to gain and maintain control over fear and safety behavior.Significance statementThe amygdala is essential for learning to fear and learning to reduce fear. However, the specific roles served by activity of different amygdala neurons at different times during learning is poorly understood. We used behavioral tasks isolating distinct aspects of learning in rats to show that brief optogenetic inhibition of BLA glutamatergic neurons around moments of reinforcement or non-reinforcement disrupts maintenance of conditioned stimulus (CS) salience. This causes a stimulus-specific, long-lasting, and aversive emotion specific deficit in the ability of the CS to be learned about or control fear responses. These consequences are the precisely goals of therapeutic interventions in human anxiety disorders. Our findings identify a core learning process disrupted by brief BLA optogenetic inhibition.