Fig. 3: Activating NI NMB neurons promotes locomotion, arousal, and theta power.

a Experimental schematic for viral expression of ChR2, stimulating NI NMB neurons, and recording hippocampal LFP. b A coronal section shows ChR2-mCherry expression in NI NMB neurons. Scale bar = 200 µm. c Recording from brain slices confirmed that brief blue laser pulses at 5, 10, 20 and 50 Hz (5 ms width, 5 mW) reliably elicited the firing of action potentials in a ChR2-expressing NI neuron. d A representative example showing the effect of optogenetic activation of NI NMB neurons (blue bar) on inducing locomotion, arousal, and theta oscillations. e Locomotor speed aligned to different frequency laser onset. f Summary of the stimulation effects on locomotor speed. g, h The effect of optogenetic activation of NI NMB neurons on the pupil diameter across time (g) and summary data (h). i, j Grand average of LFP spectrograms for the entire test group (i) and summary data on the theta power (j). Shaded areas (e, g) and error bars (f, h, j) indicate SEM. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001, ****P < 0.0001; ns, not significant; Tukey’s multiple comparisons test; see Supplementary Table 1 for detailed statistical analysis. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.