Journal: Nature Communications

Article Title: Gastrin-releasing peptide signaling in the nucleus accumbens medial shell regulates neuronal excitability and motivation

doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-64373-3

Figure Lengend Snippet: a Schematic of the experiment. Grpr fl/fl or fl/y mice were injected bilaterally with AAV5-hSYN-GFP or AAV5-hSYN-Cre-GFP in the NAc MSh. b Sample image of the injection site in the NAc MSh showing AAV-Cre-GFP in green with nuclei labeled in blue with DAPI (representative of 14 mice). c Schematic of the progressive ratio (PR) lever pressing test and timeline for operant conditioning. RT = random timing, FR1 = fixed ratio 1. d Box plots of the number of days it took control (GFP-injected, green) and Grpr cKO (Cre-injected, black) mice to reach criterion (boxes represent the interquartile range (25 – 75%), lines denote the median, whiskers represent mix to max values) (two-tailed Mann-Whitney test, p = 0.4522; n = 22 GFP and n = 14 Cre mice). e Mea n ± SEM weight of GFP and Cre-injected mice just prior to starting food deprivation (two-tailed Mann-Whitney test, p = 0.8917, n is the same as panel ( d ). f Mean ± SEM percentage of starting weight per mouse on the day the mouse completed the PR task (two-tailed Mann-Whitney test, p = 0.4192). g Survival function of total session time on PR testing day. The session ended when a mouse went three minutes without pressing the lever after pressing the lever at least one time (Mantel-Cox test, **p = 0.0054). h Mea n ± SEM total lever presses in the PR session before timeout (two-tailed Mann-Whitney test, ** p = 0.0077). i Mean ± SEM breakpoint in the PR session before timeout (two-tailed Mann-Whitney test, ** p = 0.0060). j Mean ± SEM total session time during the PR task before timeout (two-tailed Mann-Whitney test, * p = 0.0381). k Raster plot of lever presses per individual mouse during the PR task. Each line represents a single lever press. Each row represents the lever-pressing data of an individual mouse. For all bar graphs, dots represent values for individual mice. For panels d-k, n = 22 GFP-injected (green, control) and n = 14 Cre-injected (black, Grpr cKO) mice. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.

Article Snippet: Animals were food restricted to ∼90-95% of their body weight before commencing training in an operant conditioning chamber (Med Associates: ENV-307A).

Techniques: Injection, Labeling, Control, Two Tailed Test, MANN-WHITNEY