Effects of early life adversity and adolescent basolateral amygdala activity on corticolimbic connectivity and anxiety behaviors

Early postnatal development of corticolimbic circuitry is shaped by the environment and is vulnerable to early life challenges. Prior work has shown that early life adversity (ELA) leads to hyperinnervation of glutamatergic basolateral amygdala (BLA) projections to the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in adolescence. While hyperinnervation is associated with later-life anxiety behaviors, the physiological changes underpinning corticolimbic and behavioral impacts of ELA are not understood. We tested whether postsynaptic BLA-driven PFC activity is enhanced in ELA-exposed animals, using the maternal separation (MS) model of ELA. PFC local-field potential following BLA stimulation was facilitated in MS-exposed adolescents. Since ELA increases activity of the early-developing BLA, while the PFC exhibits protracted development, we further examined impacts of glutamatergic BLA activity during early adolescence on later-life PFC innervation and heightened anxiety. In early adolescence, MS-exposed animals exhibited decreased anxiety-like behavior, and acute adolescent BLA inhibition induced behaviors that resembled those of MS animals. To examine long-lasting impacts of adolescent BLA activity on innervation, BLA-originating axonal boutons in the PFC were quantified in late adolescence after early adolescent BLA inhibition. We further tested whether late adolescent BLA-PFC changes were associated with anxious reactivity expressed as heightened acoustic startle responses. MS rearing increased BLA-PFC innervation and threat reactivity in late adolescence, however early adolescent BLA inhibition was insufficient to prevent MS effects, suggesting that earlier BLA activity or post-synaptic receptor rearrangement in the PFC drives altered innervation. Taken together, these findings highlight both pre- and postsynaptic changes in the adolescent BLA-PFC circuit following ELA.