Encoding of environmental cues in central amygdala neurons during foraging

SUMMARY In order to successfully forage in an environment filled with rewards and threats, animals need to rely on familiar structures of their environment that signal food availability. The central amygdala (CeA) is known to mediate a panoply of consummatory and defensive behaviors, yet how specific activity patterns within CeA subpopulations guide optimal choices is incompletely understood. In a paradigm of appetitive conditioning in which mice freely forage for food across a continuum of cues, we find that two major subpopulations of CeA neurons, Somatostatin-positive (CeA Sst ) and protein kinase Cδ-positive (CeA PKCδ ) neurons can assign motivational properties to environmental cues and encode memory of goal location. While the proportion of food responsive cells was higher within CeA Sst than CeA PKCδ neurons, only the activities of CeA PKCδ , but not CeA Sst , neurons were required for learning of contextual food cues. Since CeA PKCδ neurons are known to promote a range of defensive behaviors, our findings point to a model in which CeA circuit components are not organized in specialized functional units but can process both aversive and rewarding information in a context and experience dependent manner. HIGHLIGHTS Two populations of central amygdala (CeA) neurons, CeA PKCδ and CeA Sst neurons can assign motivational properties to environmental cues and encode memory of goal location. The proportion of food responsive cells was higher among CeA Sst , than CeA PKCδ neurons. The activities of CeA PKCδ , but not CeA Sst , neurons are required for learning of contextual food cues. CeA PKCδ neurons represent a “general encoding” population selecting defensive and appetitive responses depending on context.