Influence of emotional arousal on the N150 of the Auditory Evoked Potential from the rat amygdala.

This study tested whether a general increase in emotional arousal is a sufficient determinant for the evocation of the N150, a negative wave in amygdalar Auditory Evoked Potentials (AEPs). Rats received one of three conditioning protocols: either conditioned stimulus (CS) presentations alone (Control) CS-shock pairings (Paired) or unpaired presentations of the CS and shock (Unpaired). Amygdalar AEPs were recorded in response to the CS.

Effect of appetitive Pavlovian conditioning on the N150 of the amygdalar Auditory Evoked Potential in the rat.

A large, negative wave which reaches its peak amplitude around 150 ms after stimulus onset, can be found in the Auditory Evoked Potential (AEP) recorded from the lateral amygdala in the rat. Previous studies in our laboratory have repeatedly shown that this N150 component increases during various aversive conditioning protocols and that this increase is attributable to both increases in emotional arousal that are inherent to aversive conditioning and to the formation of an association between the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the aversive unconditioned stimulus (US). Currently it is not known whether the N150 is also enhanced in conditioning procedures with positive reinforcement.