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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Apr 1.
Published in final edited form as: Biol Psychiatry. 2012 Jan 20;71(7):642–651. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2011.11.028

Figure 9.

Figure 9

Downregulation of the ERK2 pathway induces anhedonia. (A) Western blot images and (B) quantification showing decreased pMSK/MSK in the dentate gyrus three days after viral injection of the HSV dominant negative ERK2 vector compared with HSV-GFP indicating compromised activity of the endogenous ERK2 by the dominant negative. (C) Adult male rats exposed to dnERK2-GFP exhibit anhedonia as measured by decreased sucrose preference similar to gonadectomized animals receiving placebo during the time period when the viral construct is highly expressed. HSV-dnERK2-GFP animals increase their sucrose preference to the level of sham and gonadectomized animals receiving testosterone supplementation. Gonadectomized animals receiving placebo continue to exhibit anhedonia for up to 7 days. *p<0.05 placebo HSV-GFP vs sham HSV-GFP and gonadectomized + testosterone + HSV-GFP; #p<0.05 gonadectomized + testosterone + HSV-dnERK2-GFP; +p<0.05 placebo HSV-GFP vs sham HSV-GFP and gonadectomized + testosterone + HSV-GFP and gonadectomized + testosterone + HSV-dnERK2-GFP. Gnx = gonadectomized, DN ERK2 = dominant negative ERK2, T = testosterone, P = placebo.