Figure 6.

Object avoidance behavior in Shank3^Δ4-22-deficient mice. A, Short-term memory measured by the time of interaction with familiar and new object in the novel object recognition test. The test consisted of a training with two identical objects followed 1 h later by a testing session where one of the object was replaced by a novel object. During the testing session, both wild-type and Shank3^Δ4-22 heterozygous mice had a strong preference for the novel object over the familiar object, while Shank3^Δ4-22 homozygous mice failed to display a preference. However, this failure was due to an avoidance of both objects as shown by the strong decrease in object interaction and the increase in latency to explore any of the object for the first time in Shank3^Δ4-22 homozygous animals, rather than to a real lack of object preference. Representative heatmaps for the three genotypes are available in Extended Data Figure 6-1A. B, Repetitive behavior and object avoidance measured in the marble burying test by the number of marble buried during a 30-min session. Shank3^Δ4-22homozygous mice displayed a strongly impaired burying behavior, leaving most of the marbles undisturbed. Representative pictures and individual data are displayed in Extended Data Figure 6-1B. C, Time spend exploring objects in the repetitive novel object contact task. Shank3^Δ4-22 homozygous mice spent significantly less time interacting with the objects than their wild-type and heterozygous littermates. D, Nest building scores. Shank3^Δ4-22 homozygous mice are building less elaborate nests and use less nesting material than their wild-type and heterozygous littermates. Representative pictures of the nests and individual data are displayed in Extended Data Figure 6-1C. E, Time interacting with the scent applicator (touching, biting, climbing) during the olfactory habituation/dishabituation test. Shank3^Δ4-22 homozygous mice are avoiding interaction with the scent applicator for all nonsocial scents and for a social male scent but have interaction level similar to wild-type and heterozygous animals when presented with a female scent. WT, wild-type mice; Het, heterozygous mice; KO, homozygous knock-out mice. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.1, ***p < 0.001.