Figure 6.

Optoception can guide behavior regardless of whether brain perturbations elicited rewarding effects or not. A, Scheme of a lever self-stimulation task. Animals can trigger the delivery of laser stimulation by pressing the active lever (20 Hz, 1 s + 2 s of time out). The inactive lever was recorded but had no programmed consequence. B, The number of lever presses across sessions. This shows that stimulation of PFC^Thy1 and NAc^Thy1 was rewarding, as indicated by the number of lever presses. After three sessions, the active lever was switched to inactive and tested for four additional sessions. Levers were counterbalanced across subjects. In the Extinction phase, both levers were Inactive, and thus no laser stimulation was evoked. Error bars indicate SEM. C, Mean lever presses (excluding Extinction sessions). Small white dots indicate the number of mice tested. Overlapped also shows their average performance (right axis) achieved in the optogenetic-cue alternation task see solid red circles. D, Open field center self-stimulation task. In this task, mice had to cross the center zone to receive laser stimulation (20 Hz, 1 s + 2 s of time out). Note that no other reward or stimuli were delivered. E, A representative heat map of a PFC^Thy1 mouse crosses the center (Active) to self-stimulate. The bottom panel shows an extinction session of the same mouse. F, The time spent in the center zone across sessions for all groups; *p < 0.05, two-way ANOVA, Dunnett post hoc, significantly differ from PFC^WT during active sessions. Extended Data Figure 6-1 shows that stimulation in PFC^VGAT or TRN^VGAT mice is not aversive.