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. 2019 Jun 11;30(1):353–370. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhz092

Figure 4.

Figure 4

Effects of CVS on dendritic spine morphology in male and female rats. (A) Example of high-resolution deconvolved optical z-stack of a dendritic segment used for spine analysis with NeuronStudio Software. Open colored circles designate spine subtypes based upon user-defined parameters in the software. Scale bar = 5 μm. (B–G) Mean + SEM of dendritic spine subtypes. When considered as overall averages, thin (B) and mushroom (D) subtypes displayed significant decreases following CVS, with thin spines significantly decreased in distal apical (>250 μm) dendrites (C), but no differences in any distances with mushroom subtypes (E). (F, G) Since overall densities for stubby spine subtypes did not show significant decreases in any variable (F), no post hoc tests were performed at dendritic distances (G). *, indicates significant difference between control and CVS; P < 0.05 (B, D), P < 0.0125 (C). Males: N = 5, control; N = 5 CVS; females: N = 10 control; N = 13 CVS. (H–K) Cumulative frequency distributions of overall spine volume in PL neurons reveal graded leftward shifts (i.e., decrease) in spine volume in male rats (H) and rightward shifts (i.e., increase) in female rats (J) following CVS exposure. Plots in I and K display the difference between each function in H and J, respectively, with negative values indicating that spines up to that volume make up a smaller proportion of the CVS than control group, and positive values the opposite. K-S, Kolmogorov–Smirnov test, significance set at P < 0.01.