Fig. 6.

Chronic treatment with methylated derivatives promotes neurogenesis and TrkB activation in the hippocampus. a Neurogenesis assay via BrdU incorporation. Male C57BL/6J mice were orally administered with 5 mg/kg of various methylated compounds and vehicle solvent for 21 days and followed by 50 mg/kg BrdU i.p. Within 2 h, the mice were perfused and brain sections were immunostained with anti-BrdU to monitor the neuronal proliferation phase and DAPI. The positive cells in the dentate gyrus are highlighted by arrows. b Quantitative analysis of the BrdU-positive cells in the dentate gyrus (DG). Data are presented as mean ± SEM (* p < 0.05 vs. vehicle, Student’s t test). c Immunohistochemistry staining of brain sections. Methylated derivatives upregulate TrkB activation in the dentate gyrus. Paraffin sections were deparaffinized in xylene and rehydrated by a gradient ethanol solution. Samples were boiled in 10 mmol/l sodium citrate buffer for 20 min to retrieve antigen. Brain sections were incubated with anti-TrkB (BD Biosciences) 1: 50, and anti-p-TrkB Y816 was used at 1: 300 dilution.