Basolateral amygdala



The Basolateral Amygdala is a major limbic-related region of the brain.

The basolateral amygdala projects heavily to the nucleus accumbens. The nucleus accumbens is regarded as the limbic-motor interface, in view of these limbic afferent and its somatomotor and autonomic efferent connections. These afferent inputs have been suggested to converge monosynaptically on cells within the accumbens and are hypothesised to play a role in functions such as affective motivational behaviour. In fact there is a robust reciprocal projection between the basolateral amygdala and the hippocampus, synaptic details of which have not been fully investigated.

Bidirectional projections connect the medial prefrontal cortex and basolateral amygdala. This circuit has been implicated to play a role in fear extinction and abnormalities in the projections from the medial prefrontal cortex to the basolateral amygdala have been observed in schizophrenics.