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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2011 Jul 9.
Published in final edited form as: Cell. 2010 Jul 9;142(1):39–51. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2010.06.018

Figure 4. P7C3 corrects morphological and electrophysiological deficits in npas3-/- dentate gyrus. (See also Figure S3).

Figure 4

(A) Golgi-Cox staining of the dentate gyrus revealed aberrant dendritic arborization in npas3-/- mice relative to wild type littermates (10 sections from each of 5 mice in each group). In addition to reduced dendritic length and branching, npas3-/- dentate gyrus granular neurons also exhibited significantly reduced spine density relative to wild type littermates (*, P < 0.00001, Student’s t test). The top lower power micrographs of dentate gyrus were taken at the same magnification (scale bar = 200 μm). For the bottom two higher power micrographs of dendritic spines the scale bar = 10 μM. (B) In hippocampal slice preparation from npas3-/- mice, synaptic transmission, as assessed by whole field recordings of fEPSPs, was increased both in the outer molecular layer of the dentate gyrus and the CA1 region of the hippocampus relative to wild type. (C) Golgi-Cox staining of dentate gyrus granular neurons showed that prolonged daily treatment of npas3-/- mice with P7C3 enhanced dendritic arborization. Results shown are representative of 10 sections from each of 5 mice in each group. Hi-power micrographs are shown on top (scale bar = 25 μm), and a lower power micrograph illustrating the entire granular layer of the dentate gyrus is shown below (scale bar = 200 μm). (D) Prolonged administration of P7C3 normalized whole field recordings of fEPSPs in the dentate gyrus but not the CA1 region of npas3-/- mice. In all graphs data are expressed as mean +/- SEM.