Gateway to the study of the amygdala and emotion

Abstract The study of the amygdala and its role in the processing of emotions has become a common focus in neuroscience. The modern expansion of research in this area is partly due to the discovery of a subcortical pathway for the transmission of emotional information and the experimental paradigm that was developed to study it. Groundbreaking experiments during the 90s utilized anatomical, neurophysiological, and behavioral lesion studies in a rodent animal model to uncover the neural circuitry of a simple emotional memory. These studies demonstrated the essential role of a specific monosynaptic pathway in emotional memory, using traditional tools and behavioral methods. The development of an animal model with a simple and appropriate classical conditioning paradigm made experimental investigations into the neural basis of emotion tenable and available to a generation of neuroscientists. These tools and a focus on the amygdala’s neural connections and their essential role in emotional memory were a driving force in the explosion of research regarding the amygdala and emotion.