functional unit of forebrain organization relevant to motor/cognitive control, may also be relevant to the fundamental organization of the amygdala (Cassell et al., 1999). There also exists a population of identified amygdalar neurons known as intercalated cell masses (ICMs). These are groups of tightly packed GABAergic interneurons that form islands at the anatomical interface between the BLA and CeA (Royer et al., 1999; Pare et al., 2004). Functionally, these cells are thought to provide feed-forward inhibition onto CeM neurons in response to BLA input (Samson and Pare, 2006; Amano et al., 2010).
