The prelimbic (PL) area and basolateral amygdala (lateral [LA] and basolateral [BL] nuclei) have closely related functions and similar extrinsic connectivity. Reasoning that the computational advantage of such redundancy should be reflected in differences in how these structures represent information, we compared the coding properties of PL and amygdala neurons during a task that requires rats to produce different conditioned defensive or appetitive behaviors. Rather than unambiguous regional differences in the identities of the variables encoded, we found gradients in how the same variables are represented. Whereas PL and BL neurons represented many different parameters through minor variations in firing rates, LA cells coded fewer task features with stronger changes in activity. At the population level, whereas valence could be easily distinguished from amygdala activity, PL neurons could distinguish both valence and trial identity as well as or better than amygdala neurons. Thus, PL has greater representational capacity.

前肢 (PL) 区域和基底外侧杏仁核（外侧 [LA] 和基底外侧 [BL] 核）具有密切相关的功能和相似的外部连接。推断这种冗余的计算优势应该反映在这些结构如何表示信息的差异上，我们比较了 PL 和杏仁核神经元在需要大鼠产生不同条件防御或食欲行为的任务期间的编码特性。我们发现了相同变量表示方式的梯度，而不是编码变量身份的明确区域差异。PL 和 BL 神经元通过放电率的微小变化代表许多不同的参数，而 LA 细胞编码的任务特征更少，活动变化更大。在人口层面，虽然价可以很容易地与杏仁核活动区分开来，PL 神经元可以区分价和试验身份，以及或优于杏仁核神经元。因此，PL 具有更大的表示能力。