Fig. 6.

Viral-mediated overexpression of AAV-H1aV in the BLA impaired social interaction and fear conditioning: Animals were infused with either AAV-H1aV designed to overexpress Homer1a or AAV-H1aV(W24A) designed to expressed a mutant form of Homer1a, which served as a control. a Viral genome maps depicted for AAV-H1aV and AAV-H1aV(W24A). b Representative picture depicting AAV-H1aV viral transduction in the BLA of naïve animals. AAV-H1aV animals exhibit reduced social interaction compared to AAV-H1aV(W24A) as indicated by (c) reduced social interaction time without affecting (d) mean distance traveled in the social interaction apparatus (AAV-H1aV(W24A) = 7, AAV-H1aV = 8). e Animals expressing AAV-H1aV and AAV-H1aV(W24A) were subjected to auditory fear conditioning, and 24 h later, they were examined for LTM. AAV-H1aV animals exhibited significantly reduced freezing compared to AAV-H1aV(W24A) animals