Predation risk reweights reward preference through coordinated amygdala-prelimbic dynamics

Abstract

A fundamental challenge for animals and humans is resolving competing survival demands under naturalistic threat, yet circuit-level mechanisms remain poorly understood. We developed a paradigm recapitulating a predator-prey encounter: Long-Evans rats emerged from a nest to forage in an open arena, choosing between preferred and standard reward locations while facing a robotic predator. We simultaneously recorded single-unit activity from the basolateral amygdala (BLA) and the prelimbic cortex (PL). Rats shifted to the safer option under threat. BLA neurons responded predominantly to the predator, whereas PL neurons encoded reward value, threat context, and behavioral state. Population decoding revealed threat encoding in BLA and multiplexed representations in PL. Threat-responsive BLA neurons were preferentially recruited into BLA-PL synchrony before safe choices, and information flow became biased from BLA to PL following predator attack. These findings identify coordinated corticolimbic dynamics as a candidate mechanism through which threat reweights reward-guided action selection under ecological risk.