In order to thrive, animals must be able to recognize aversive and appetitive stimuli within
the environment and subsequently initiate appropriate behavioral responses. This …

Highlights•Amygdala neurons respond to rewarding and aversive stimuli and represent state
value.•Distinct amygdala circuits have been identified for appetitive and aversive …

Highlights•Populations of the amygdala complex drive positive and negative
valence.•Valence coding can be defined by neural responses to positive and negative …

The basolateral amygdala (BLA) mediates associative learning for both fear and reward.
Accumulating evidence supports the notion that different BLA projections distinctly alter …

How do our brains determine whether something is good or bad? How is this computational
goal implemented in biological systems? Given the critical importance of valence processing …

Behavioral responses to environmental stimuli are dictated by the affective valence of the
stimulus, good (positive valence) or bad (negative valence). These stimuli can innately elicit …

The amygdala is critical for emotional processing and motivated behavior. Its role in these
functions is due to its processing of the valence of environmental stimuli. The amygdala …

The basolateral amygdala (BLA) plays essential roles in behaviors motivated by stimuli with
either positive or negative valence, but how it processes motivationally opposing information …

Although the amygdala is a major locus for hedonic processing, how it encodes valence
information is poorly understood. Given the hedonic potency of odor stimuli and the …

Although the basolateral amygdala (BLA) is known to play a critical role in the formation of
memories of both positive and negative valence, the coding and routing of valence-related …