Fig. 5.

Positive and negative experiences activate distinct VTA neuron subpopulations.

(A) Schematic showing the experimental procedure for C57BL/6 J mice subject to restraint stress and subsequent c-Fos staining. Representative images showing c-Fos expression in BLA (B and C), NAc (E and F) and VTA (H and I). Statistical analysis showing restraint stress increased c-Fos expression in BLA (D, two-tailed unpaired t-test, t₍₁₀₎ = 3.989, P = 0.0026), NAc (G, two-tailed unpaired t-test, t₍₁₀₎ = 12.23, P < 0.001) and VTA (J, two-tailed unpaired t-test with Welch's correction, t_(5.610) = 13.69, P < 0.001). (K) Schematic showing the experimental procedure for DAT-IRES-Cre; Ai14 mice subject to restraint stress and subsequent c-Fos staining. Representative images showing the tdTomato (L) and c-Fos (M) expression in VTA. (N) Images of L and M are merged. (O) Statistical analysis showing the percentage of c-Fos-positive VTA neurons that were labelled by tdTomato (17.04 ± 3.513 %, n = 4). (P) Diagram illustrating virus injection in target areas and subsequent experiments. Representative images showing the GFP (Q) and c-Fos (R) expression in VTA. (S) Images of Q and R are merged. (T) Statistical analysis showing the percentage of c-Fos-positive VTA neurons that were labelled by GFP (3.765 ± 1.285 %, n = 5). (U) Schematic showing the experimental procedure for Fos-CreER^T2; Ai14 mice. Representative images showing the tdTomato (V) and c-Fos (W) expression in VTA. (X) Images of V and W are merged. (Y) Statistical analysis showing the percentage of c-Fos-positive VTA neurons that were labelled by tdTomato (3.098 ± 1.412 %, n = 5). ***P < 0.001. Data are presented as means±SEM. Annotation (AP): distance from the bregma (mm). Scale bars correspond to 100 μm.