FIGURE 2.

Selective expression of pAAV-CRE in the dHPC triggers memory enhancement. (A,B) Behavior of the four groups of mice in the open-field test. Caffeine decreased the time in the center (B) and distance in center (A) in CRE and EGFP mice. (C,D) Behavior of the four groups of mice in the Elevated Plus Maze (EPM) test. Caffeine decreased the percentage of open-arm entries (C) and the percentage of time spent in the open arms (D) in CRE and EGFP mice. (E) Behavior of the four groups of mice in the Novel Object Recognition (NOR) test. The time spent exploring a novel object was increased by caffeine only in EGFP mice during the testing trial. (F) Behavior of the four groups of mice in the Y-maze test. The time spent in the novel arm was increased by caffeine only in EGFP mice during the retrieval phase. (G) Selected expression of AAV-CRE in the dHPC (scale bar = 500 μm). (H) Images of hippocampal brain sections obtained from mice injected with AAV-CRE or AAV-EGFP (scale bar = 30 μm). The level of A_2AR (red) was lower in CRE-positive cells (upper panel) than in cells transfected with pAAV-EGFP (lower panel). Data are presented as the mean ± SEM; n = 7 mice per group; *p < .05, two-way ANOVA, Bonferroni post hoc t-test.