Fig. 2: Inactivation of the spinal trigeminal nucleus interpolaris (Sp5I) impairs predatory hunting.

A Schematic diagram showing TG neuron projections to the trigeminal complex and the injection of AAV-hM4Di-mCherry into the trigeminal complex of adult wild-type (WT) mice. B Schematic diagram showing a horizontal slice of the trigeminal complex. Representative horizontal brain sections showing the injection of AAV-hM4Di-mCherry into the Pr5 (C), Sp5O (F), Sp5I (I) or Sp5C (L), respectively. Representative behavioral ethograms of predatory hunting with the time course of predator–prey distance (PPD) (top) in parallel with markings of jaw attacks (bottom, yellow) with or without clozapine-N-oxide (CNO) to inactive Pr5 (D), Sp5O (G), Sp5I (J) or Sp5C (M), respectively. Quantitative analysis of latency to attack, time to capture, and attack frequency of mice after inactivation of Pr5 (E), Sp5O (H), Sp5I (K) or Sp5C (N), respectively. Schemes in (A, B) were created in BioRender. Cao, P. (2025) https://BioRender.com/y78d529. Numbers of mice are indicated in the graphs. The data in (E, H, K, N) are presented as mean values ± SEM. Statistical significance was analyzed by two-sided paired t-test (E, H, K, N). Source data are provided as a Source Data file.