Basolateral Amygdala Represents and Remembers Ethological Events

The basolateral amygdala plays a crucial role in memory consolidation yet the general neural mechanism remains elusive. Basolateral amygdala neurons were recorded from freely-moving rats as they interacted with different ethological stimuli: male or female rats, a moving toy and food. Over 20% of neurons showed highly tuned event-specific responses to a single class of stimuli. Firing persisted in 30% of these responsive cells for minutes after the removal of the eliciting stimulus. Neural information flowed directionally from event-specific neurons to less specific neurons with changes in connection strength after removal of the stimulus. We propose that the basolateral amygdala identifies specific ethological events, with circuit-wide activity driven by the event-specific neurons during and after the termination of those events likely facilitating active short-term memory consolidation.