Figure 1. Immune stimulation rescues sociability deficits in MIA offspring.

a, Body temperature profile following Veh or LPS injection in PBS-offspring (Veh n=11, LPS n=11; from 5 independent experiments). Initial spike in body temperature is due to handling stress. Veh,Vehicle; LPS, lipopolysaccharide. b,c, Mice were tested for sociability (% time investigating social object / total time investigating both social and inanimate objects) one day prior to LPS injection (Pre). Mice were then tested for sociability four hours after either Veh or LPS injection (Test) (PBS-Veh n=10, PBS-LPS n=9, MIA-Veh n=10, MIA-LPS n=12, WT-Veh n=8, WT-LPS n=11, Cntnap2-Veh n=11, Cntnap2-LPS n=11, Fmr1-Veh n=11, Fmr1-LPS n=15, Shank3-Veh n=8, Shank3-LPS n=10; from 3 independent experiments). d, Virus encoding inhibitory DREADD (AAV₂-hSyn-DIO-hM4D(Gi)-mCherry) was targeted to the vLPO of Vgat-Cre MIA mice. Scale bar represents 2mm. vLPO, ventral part of the lateral preoptic nucleus. e, Body temperature profile following Veh or CNO injection. f,g, Mice were tested for sociability one day prior to injection (Pre). The following two days, mice received counterbalanced injections of either Veh or CNO. Sociability was assessed two hours post-injection. For experiments d-g, n=9 for all groups; from 2 independent experiments. *P<0.05, **P<0.01 calculated by two-way repeated measures ANOVA with Bonferroni’s (a,e) and Sidak’s (c) post-hoc tests, and one-way repeated measures ANOVA with Tukey’s post-hoc test (g). Graphs indicate mean ± s.e.m.