Figure 4.

BLA-specific deletion of Mecp2 impairs cue-dependent fear conditioning. A, The average amount of time spent freezing was determined for contextual and cue-dependent memory. AAV-CreGFP mice had a significant impairment (p < 0.05) in cue-dependent fear conditioning as demonstrated by a significant decrease in time spent freezing compared with AAV-GFP mice. There was no significant difference in context-dependent fear conditioning between AAV-GFP- and AAV-CreGFP-injected mice. B, AAV-GFP and AAV-CreGFP mice had similar footshock sensitivity to pain as measured by shock intensity to elicit flinch and jump responses. C, Representative video tracking data from the social interaction test. The gray box in the arena indicates the location of the target mouse. − and + in the gray boxes indicate the absence or presence of the target mouse, respectively. D, The ratio of time spent in the interaction zone with the target to the time without the target revealed similar levels of social interaction between the AAV-GFP and AAV-CreGFP mice. *p < 0.05 by Student's t test; AAV-GFP, n = 13; AAV-CreGFP, n = 10 for A–E.