Genetic Labeling of Excitatory Neurons

All experiments were performed in accordance with the regulations of the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the University of California, Irvine, and the National Institutes of Health guidelines for animal care and use. All efforts were made to reduce the number of animals used, to minimize their suffering, and to use alternatives to in vivo techniques, if available. Male mice (3–15 weeks old) were purchased from Charles River Laboratories for sham and SNL procedures. To genetically label excitatory neurons, vesicular glutamate transporter 2 (VGluT2)-Cre mice (stock #016963, The Jackson Laboratory; Vong et al., 2011 (link)) were crossed with Cre reporter Ai9 tdTomato mice (Madisen et al., 2010 (link)) from The Jackson Laboratory (stock #007909). The VGluT2-expressing cells were visualized in the offspring VGluT2-Cre; Ai9 mice. All experimental mice were hemizygous for both transgenes (VGluT2-Cre; Ai9). The animals were housed in a room with a 12 h light/dark cycle with ad libitum access to food and water.