Figure 1. OFC and BLA neurons respond differentially to a reversal in contingencies.
During initial training (pre-reversal; left panel) both OFC and BLA respond to cues predicting a rewarding outcome. However, when contingencies are reversed (post-reversal; right panel) these neuronal responses diverge. Specifically, the BLA neurons which were encoding the previously reward-predictive outcome now switch to start responding to now reward-predictive cue. In contrast, only about 20% of OFC neurons reverse their preference (Schoenbaum et al., 2003). Instead, a new population of neurons that were previously not cue-selective begin responding to the new contingency.