Extended Data Fig. 4: Activating LPOAESR1 neurons elicit a variety of USV syllables similar to natural USVs.
From: Flexible scaling and persistence of social vocal communication
a, Evaluation of USV syllable types emitted by a wild-type male mouse naturally interacting with a behaving female mouse, compared to wild-type P7–P8 pup calls (n = 18 mice) (orange) evoked by individually isolating mice from the home cage; wild-type adult male calls (n = 20 mice) evoked by interaction with female or male urine, anaesthetized male or female mice on successive days (grey); or calls from experimental male mice expressing ChR2 (LPOAESR1/ChR2, n = 23 mice) evoked by interaction with either female urine or a live female mouse with no ChR2 light stimulation to determine the natural USV repertoire (blue, left); or male mice expressing ChR2 (LPOAESR1/ChR2, n = 23 mice) stimulated with light (10 Hz, 25 Hz and 50 Hz) in the absence of a female mouse (blue, right; blue shading ‘light stimulation’); the same male mice were used in the no-light and light stimulation experiments. Dot denotes the Pearson correlations for the top 5% of the most frequently used syllables, in which the box plot shows the mean and interquartile range of these correlations, and the plus symbol (‘+’) shows the correlation of the top 95% of the most frequency used syllables. P = 6.12 × 10−115 (F > 83.4), *P < 0.05, ***P < 0.001, one-way ANOVA test. MATLAB ‘mulcompare’ function was used for group statistical analysis comparing all other groups to wild-type male USV triggered by interaction with a live female mouse. b, Heat map showing Pearson’s correlation score among all 40 types of syllable detected across each condition compared to wild-type male USVs during interaction with live female mouse. Results are grouped by types of sensory stimulation: female context (red); ChR2 stimulation (blue); male context (green) and pup (orange). Warmer colours indicate higher similarity, which is quantified in a. These data show that the repertoire of USV syllables evoked by photostimulation are rich and varied. When compared to natural USVs, they are similar to those produced by wild-type male mice as they interact with live female mice; and less similar to USVs evoked by male cues and pup USVs.
