Fig. 5.

The ASD model and stress model shared some commonly activated brain regions but also exhibited a few differentiated areas during repetitive self-grooming behavior.

A-B, We used the c-Fos strategy to explore the functional anatomical mapping of neuronal circuits underlying grooming behavior. c-Fos was increased in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) (Mann-Whitney U test) and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), including the medial orbital cortex (MO) (unpaired t-test), ventral orbital cortex (VO) (unpaired t-test), lateral orbital cortex (LO) (unpaired t-test), basolateral amygdala (BLA) (unpaired t-test), and thalamic nucleus (PV) (Two-tailed unpaired separate variance estimation t-test), but not in the thalamic nucleus central (CL) (Mann-Whitney U test) or medial thalamic nucleus (CM) (Mann-Whitney U test) in Shank3B KO autistic mice (n represents slices from 4 mice per group). C-D, c-Fos was increased in the PFC, VO (unpaired t-test), LO (Two-tailed unpaired separate variance estimation t-test), and BLA but not in the MO (Two-tailed unpaired separate variance estimation t-test), PV, CL, and CM (unpaired t-test) in the stress-induced anxiety model (n represents slices from 3 mice per group). Data are shown as the means ± SEM. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01.