Fig. 2: Imaging medulla glutamatergic neurons during sleep.

a Schematic of microendoscopic calcium imaging in the VLM. Tungsten wires attached to the GRIN lens were used to stabilize the field of view. Bottom, activity map of an example imaging session in a Vglut2-Cre mouse. Scale bar, 50 μm. b An example showing brain states (gray for wake, orange for NREM sleep, purple for REM sleep), EEG power spectrogram (0–25 Hz), EMG, and representative calcium traces (DF/F) in an imaging session. Brown shadows indicate NREM sleep. Purple shadows indicate REM sleep. Bottom, enlarged window showing calcium activity in 3 cells (#6 as a NREM sleep active cell) during wake–sleep transition. c Quantification of calcium activity of NREM sleep active cells (n = 11 neurons from 4 mice, *P = 0.011 between wake and NREM, **P = 0.0007 between NREM and REM, P = 0.621 between wake and REM, two-sided paired t-test) in each brain state. Each line represents one neuron. Bar graph, average across neurons. Error bars, SEM. d Left, quantification of calcium activity during the transitions from wakefulness (W) to NREM sleep (N) in the NREM sleep active cells in panel c. Right, quantification of calcium activity during the NREM-to-wake transitions in the NREM active cells (n = 11 neurons from 4 mice, two-sided paired t-test, **P = 0.002 for W–N, P = 0.716 for N–W, n.s. no significance). Error bars, SEM. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.