Threat or Reward?

Threat or Reward?

Submitted by Praneeth Namburi and Sarah Halbert in the Tye Lab at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT

Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences

This image shows a neuron (blue) in the a region of the brain known as the basolateral amygdala. In green, it shows axon fibers that carry auditory information to the basolateral amygdala from a region of the brain known as the thalamus. Inputs from the auditory thalamus to the basolateral amydala are modulated by learning whether a sound is predictive of threat or reward. I am interested in how the brain learns whether a stimulus is predictive of threat or reward and choose[s] the appropriate behavior.

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