Acetylcholine is released in the basolateral amygdala in response to predictors of reward and enhances the learning of cue-reward contingency

The basolateral amygdala (BLA) is critical for associating initially neutral cues with appetitive and aversive stimuli and receives dense neuromodulatory acetylcholine (ACh) projections. We measured BLA ACh signaling and activity of neurons expressing CaMKIIα (a marker for glutamatergic principal ce...

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Published in:	eLife Vol. 9
Main Authors:	Crouse, Richard B, Kim, Kristen, Batchelor, Hannah M, Girardi, Eric M, Kamaletdinova, Rufina, Chan, Justin, Rajebhosale, Prithviraj, Pittenger, Steven T, Role, Lorna W, Talmage, David A, Jing, Miao, Li, Yulong, Gao, Xiao-Bing, Mineur, Yann S, Picciotto, Marina R
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	England eLife Science Publications, Ltd 18-09-2020 eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd eLife Sciences Publications Ltd
Subjects:	Acetylcholine Acetylcholine - metabolism Animals Basolateral Nuclear Complex - metabolism Calcium-Calmodulin-Dependent Protein Kinase Type 2 - genetics Calcium-Calmodulin-Dependent Protein Kinase Type 2 - metabolism cholinergic Cues Female fiber photometry GCaMP grabach3.0 Learning - physiology Male Mice Neurons - metabolism Neuroscience Optogenetics Reward reward learning GCaMP fiber photometry mouse neuroscience cholinergic optogenetics grabach3.0 reward learning
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Summary:	The basolateral amygdala (BLA) is critical for associating initially neutral cues with appetitive and aversive stimuli and receives dense neuromodulatory acetylcholine (ACh) projections. We measured BLA ACh signaling and activity of neurons expressing CaMKIIα (a marker for glutamatergic principal cells) in mice during cue-reward learning using a fluorescent ACh sensor and calcium indicators. We found that ACh levels and nucleus basalis of Meynert (NBM) cholinergic terminal activity in the BLA (NBM-BLA) increased sharply in response to reward-related events and shifted as mice learned the cue-reward contingency. BLA CaMKIIα neuron activity followed reward retrieval and moved to the reward-predictive cue after task acquisition. Optical stimulation of cholinergic NBM-BLA terminal fibers led to a quicker acquisition of the cue-reward contingency. These results indicate BLA ACh signaling carries important information about salient events in cue-reward learning and provides a framework for understanding how ACh signaling contributes to shaping BLA responses to emotional stimuli.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23
ISSN:	2050-084X 2050-084X
DOI:	10.7554/elife.57335