Encoding of Conditioned Taste Aversion in Cortico-Amygdala Circuits

Abstract

Summary: Avoidance of potentially toxic food by means of conditioned taste aversion is critical for survival of many animals. However, the underlying neuronal mechanisms are poorly understood. Here, using two-photon calcium imaging of defined gustatory cortex neurons in vivo, we show that conditioned taste aversion dynamically shifts neuronal population coding by stimulus-specific recruitment of neurons that project to the basolateral amygdala. : Lavi et al. show that association of palatable tastant with malaise preferentially recruits gustatory cortex neurons projecting to the basolateral amygdala and shifts the representation of the conditioned tastant to become more similar to the representation of an intrinsically aversive tastant. Keywords: CTA, gustatory cortex, BLA, calcium imaging, associative learning, conditioning