Fig. 5: The biphasic activity of LS^Nts neurons drives food seeking and consumption.

A Left panel: Population Ca²⁺ activity of LS^Nts neurons during free feeding of Ensure. Middle panel: Population Ca²⁺ activity of LS^Nts neurons when food was omitted. Right panel: Population Ca²⁺ activity of LS^Nts neurons when the animal was head-fixed and fed Ensure. Dashed vertical line: first lick. B Area under the curve of Ca²⁺ activity during the food approach phase (n = 8). One-way ANOVA (F_{(2, 21)} = 5.49, P < 0.01) followed by Tukey’s post hoc test. *P < 0.05. Means ± s.e.m. C Area under the curve of Ca²⁺ activity during the food consumption phase (n = 8). One-way ANOVA (F_{(2, 21)} = 11.05, P < 0.01) followed by Tukey’s post hoc test. **P < 0.01 and ***P < 0.001. Means ± s.e.m. D Upper panel: Schematic showing the injection of AAV-DIO-ChR2 or AAV-DIO-eNpHR into the LS for optogenetic manipulation of LS^Nts neurons. Middle panel: Representative image showing the expression of ChR2-mCherry in LS^Nts neurons. Lower panel: Representative image showing the expression of eNpHR-EYFP. E The effect of optogenetic activation (blue, n = 4) or inhibition (yellow, n = 6) of LS^Nts neurons during the food approach phase on food seeking and food consumption. Wilcoxon signed-rank test. *P < 0.05. F The effect of optogenetic activation (blue, n = 4) or inhibition (yellow, n = 6) of LS^Nts neurons during the food consumption phase on food seeking and food consumption. Wilcoxon signed-rank test. *P < 0.05 and **P < 0.01.