Skip to main content
. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2014 Jan 20.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Neurosci. 2013 Apr 28;16(6):698–705. doi: 10.1038/nn.3387

Figure 3.

Figure 3

Disruption of glucocorticoid troughs reduces learning-dependent spine pruning. (a) Schematic of experimental procedure. (b) Learning caused a delayed increase in the elimination of pre-existing spines, which represents the number of spines that were present before training (day 0) and eliminated on day 2 or 7, expressed as a percentage of the total number of spines at baseline. Whereas training had no immediate impact on spine elimination on day 2 (F1,12 = 0.03, P = 0.87), spine elimination was significantly elevated on day 7 (F4,15 = 3.56, P = 0.03). Learning-induced spine pruning required an intact glucocorticoid trough 4–6 d after training. *P < 0.05 versus untrained control after Holm-Bonferroni correction. †P < 0.05 uncorrected, P < 0.10 corrected. (c) Elimination of pre-training spines was correlated with retention of the learned motor skill on day 7 (r = 0.83, P < 0.001). Cort, corticosterone. Error bars, s.e.m. See Supplementary Table 3 for statistics and details.