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. 2010 Aug 6;2:28. doi: 10.3389/fnsyn.2010.00028

Figure 2.

Figure 2

Structural effects of environmental enrichment on synaptic circuits of MeCP2 mutant mice. (A) MeCP2-KO and WT mice reared in standard conditions (ST) show similar excitatory and inhibitory synaptic density in the S1 cortex. Environmental enrichment (EE) leads to an increase of excitatory synapses and a loss of inhibitory synapses in WT male animals (blue pyramidal neurons). In KO male mice, EE produces an increase of excitatory contacts but no changes of inhibitory synapse density (cyan pyramidal neurons). (B) ST-MeCP2-KO mice show an increased number of inhibitory synapses on the soma and dendrites of Purkinje cells (PC) in the cerebellum compared to ST–WT. EE induce an increase of excitatory contacts in both genotypes. However, while EE increases the density of inhibitory synapses on both dendrites and soma in WT animals, it is able to increase only the density of inhibitory synapses on dendrites MeCP2-KO mice with no effect on inhibitory synapse density on the PC soma.