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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2012 Oct 27.
Published in final edited form as: Neuroscience. 2011 Jun 22;194:282–290. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2011.06.047

Figure 4.

Figure 4

Effects of chronic restraint stress on dendritic spines. A. Examples of spine morphology in each experimental group. Scale bar in WT-US segment represents 2 µm. Spine density on secondary apical (B) and primary basal (C) dendrites of pyramidal-like BLA cells in WT (US, n=8; CS, n=9) and Fmr1 KO (US, n=8; CS, n=7) mice. Each point represents the mean ± SEM density of 30 dendrite segments (1–7 per animal) of each genotype. Measurements were made on primary basal dendrites 25 µm from the soma and on secondary apical dendrites 25 µm from the apical trunk. Data were analyzed by means of ANOVA with genotype (WT, KO) and treatment (US, CS) as factors. B. Secondary apical dendrites. The genotype × condition interaction (F(1, 116)=16.769, p<0.0001) was statistically significant. C. Primary basal dendrites. The genotype × condition interaction (F(1, 116)=17.961, p<0.0001) was statistically significant. We probed for specific group differences by means of post-hoc Bonferroni t-tests. Results are shown in the figure as follows: *, p<0.05; **, p<0.01; ***, p<0.001.

Cumulative frequency distributions of spine lengths in WT (US, n=8; CS, n=9) and Fmr1 KO (US, n=8; CS, n=7) mice. (D) Apical dendrites. Lengths were measured in 758, 896, 993, and 836 spines in WT-US, WT-CS, KO-US, KO-CS, respectively. (E) Basal dendrites. Lengths were measured in 699, 861, 917, and 817 spines in WT-US, WT-CS, KO-US, KO-CS, respectively. Statistical analysis of all four cumulative frequency distributions of spine length on both apical and basal dendrites indicate statistically significant differences for both apical and basal dendrites (2- way Kruskal-Wallis test; apical: H = 45.89, p ≤ 0.001; basal: H = 76.03, p ≤ 0.001). Pairs of cumulative frequencies were further probed by means of Kolmogorov-Smirnov Tests; results indicate that for apical dendrites differences between WT-US and WT-CS (p ≤ 0.001), WT-US and KO-US (p ≤ 0.05), and WT-CS and KO-CS (p ≤ 0.01) were statistically significant. For basal dendrites differences between WT-US and WT-CS (p ≤ 0.001), WT-US and KO-US (p ≤ 0.01), and WT-CS and KO-CS, p≤0.05 were statistically significant.

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