Fig. 5: Optogenetic excitation of LC-NE neurons increased arousal level and decreased whole-brain FC in awake mice. | Nature Communications

Fig. 5: Optogenetic excitation of LC-NE neurons increased arousal level and decreased whole-brain FC in awake mice.

From: Norepinephrine-mediated arousal fluctuations drive inverted U-shaped functional connectivity dynamics

Fig. 5

A, B Schematic setup of awake mouse fMRI with simultaneous recording of iEEG and NE fiber photometry under stabilized step-function opsin (SSFO)-based optogenetic activation of LC-NE neurons. C SSFO activation of LC-NE neurons significantly increased cortical extracellular NE concentrations. Error bar or shades, the standard error of the mean (SEM). Each dot represented an individual mouse (N = 7 mice for SSFO & N = 5 mice for Sham). Statistical significance was determined using two-tailed two-sample t-test. **, p < 0.01. D SSFO activation of LC-NE neurons promoted the significant increase of arousal from middle to high level in awake mice. Upper left, averaged iEEG power spectrum in SSFO and Sham groups. Upper right, significant increase of mouse arousal level of SSFO group, compared to that of Sham group. Here, we computed the EEG-based arousal index in 60 s window width (non-overlapping) to maximize SNR and to align with the slower FC measures used in the group analysis. Notably, such choice limited the detectable transition time to 1 min, and the results processed with higher temporal resolution were shown in Supplementary Fig. 12. Lower, SSFO activation of LC-NE neurons increased the arousal from middle to high level in awake mice. Each line represented an individual mouse (N = 7 mice for SSFO & N = 5 mice for Sham). Error bar, the SEM. Statistical significance was determined using (two tails) paired t-test. *, p < 0.05. n.s. no significance. E, F SSFO activation of LC-NE neurons decreased whole-brain FC in awake mice. Each dot represented an individual mouse (N = 16 mice for SSFO & N = 12 mice for Sham). Error bar, the SEM. Statistical significance was determined using two-tailed two-sample t-test. *, p < 0.05. G Schematic summary of increased arousal from middle to high level and decreased whole-brain FC after SSFO activation on LC-NE neurons in awake mice. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.

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