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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2018 Jan 1.
Published in final edited form as: Brain Behav Immun. 2016 May 26;59:55–61. doi: 10.1016/j.bbi.2016.05.019

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Changes in social appraoch and grooming behavior following bone marrow transplant. (A) Both syngeneic and allogeneic C57 recipient mice showed species-typical social approach behavior indcicated by a significant preference for the chamber containing a novel mouse compared to the novel object. Conversley, syngeneic BTBR mice displayed characteristic deficits in social appraoch as measured by an absence of preference for either mouse or object chamber. However, BTBR recipient mice treated with bone marrow of allogeneic C57 donors showed significant prefrence for the novel mosue over the novel object, indicating a restoration of social behavior deficits. (B) No difference in sociability scores were observed between C57 mice reciveing bone marrow from either C57 or BTBR recipients. Conversley, while BTBR mice treated with syngeneic bone marrow showed low sociabilty scores, allogeneic recipients displayed high levels of sociabilty equal to that of C57 control mice. (C) C57 recipients of both syngeneic (C57 donor) and allogeneic (BTBR donor) conditions spent significantly more time sniffing and engaging with a novel mouse compared to the novel object. In contrast, BTBR mice who received syngeneic bone marrow from BTBR recipients spent equal time sniffing the novelm mouse and novel object. BTBR recipient mice treated with allogeneic bone marrow from the highly social C57 donor strain showed significant increases in the time spent sniffing the novel mouse compared to the novel object, indicating improvemetns in social engagement and preference for a social stimulus. (D) Representative heat maps showing the total time and location of the nose of each mouse was during the 10-minute social approach task. Warmer colors (red) indicate greater time the nose-point was detected. White circles represent the location of the novel mouse (left) and novel object (right) in each arena. (E) No differences in overall locomotor activity, as indicated by total number of chamber entries, was present across groups. (F) C57 mice treatd with BTBR bone marrow spent signficnatly more time grooming compared to syngeneic C57 control mice. This increase in grooming behavior was similar to that of BTBR mice treated with C57 bone marrow but significantly less than that of syngeneic BTBR mice. *p < 0.05, C57-Syngeneic n = 10, C57-Allogeneic n = 10, BTBR-Syngeneic n = 13, BTBR-Allogeneic, n=15.