Figure 2.

Auditory information convergence in the lateral amygdala (LA). An auditory signal reaches the auditory thalamus in 7–9 ms. From there, it is sent to the lateral amygdala (LA) either directly (‘low road’), or via a longer route, through the auditory cortices, for higher processing of the auditory signal, therefore providing the LA with more detailed information (‘high road’). Therefore, information processed through the high road (blue) reaches the LA later than the direct thalamic processed information (green). Cells in the LA are interconnected and provide a recurrent structure for possible reverberating activity in the LA, facilitating coincidence detection between afferent information and intra-amygdala processing, thus enabling Hebbian plasticity for storage of emotional memory traces in the LA.