Figure 3.

Tunicamycin inhibits mushroom spine formation and expression of synaptic protein and attenuation by SB. The representative images of dendritic spines in rat hippocampal CA1, CA3 and DG at 48 h after TM injection (A,B). TM decreased numbers of mushroom‐type spines significantly in DG and CA3 subsets but not in CA1 of the TM‐treated group, and no significant change of thin‐spines was detected (B‐F). SB could reverse the above phenomenon. The levels of synapse‐associated proteins were measured by Western blotting and quantitative analysis, normalized against tubulin probed by DM1A (G,H). The data were expressed as mean ± SD (n = 3 for A and B, bar = 50 μm for A, bar = 2 μm for B; n = 6 for G). * P < .05, ** P < .05 vs DMSO, ^# P < .05 vs TM