Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2019 Apr 18;9:140. doi: 10.1038/s41398-019-0474-x

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

© The Author(s) 2019

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

PMC Copyright notice

Fig. 3 — Upper panel: in the PVN, there was a significant effect of fear conditioning on OT neurons activation (P = 0.0465), with a significantly greater percentage of activated OT neurons in rats exposed to foot shocks alone in comparison with control rats (*P < 0.05). OT neurons within the SON were significantly activated in response to fear conditioning (P < 0.0001, one-way ANOVA), with a greater percentage of OT neurons co-expressing cFos in rats exposed to un-signaled foot shocks compared with control rats (****P < 0.0001), as well as in rats exposed to foot shocks signaled by a cue compared with controls (**P < 0.01). Finally, there was a greater activation of OT neurons in response to foot shocks alone vs. foot shocks signaled by a cue in the SON (***P < 0.001). Fear conditioning activated OT neurons in the AN (****P < 0.0001, one-way ANOVA), with a significantly greater percentage of activated OT neurons in rats exposed to unsignaled foot shocks (****P < 0.0001) and in rats exposed to foot shocks signaled by a cue (*P = 0.0168), compared with control rats. Bottom panel: although control rats show little co-expression of OT (green, open arrows) and cFos (red, closed arrows) in the PVN (A), rats exposed to foot shocks alone (A’), but not foot shocks signaled by a cue (A”), show increase in percentage of OT neurons co-expressing cFos in the PVN. In the SON, number of OT neurons co-expressing cFos was significantly increased in response to unsignaled foot shocks (B’) as well as foot shocks signaled by a cue (B”), in comparison with control rats (B). In the AN, percentage of OT neurons co-expressing cFos was increased in response to foot shocks alone (C’) as well as foot shocks signaled by a cue (C”), in comparison with control rats (C”, magnification ×60, scale bar 50 μm)