Recent technical advances in neuroscience give a more precise view of the inner circuitry of the amygdala and of its links within the medial temporal lobe, and with the basal ganglia and prefrontal cortex. We will summarize corresponding data and present the computational model of the amygdala that we have designed accordingly. This model proposes how the main features of pavlovian conditioning are computed in the amygdalar nuclei and how emotional values of stimuli are computed and exploited in other brain regions, for episodic and semantic learning and for instrumental conditioning.