Fig. 11.

Dup(Rno20)Yah rats exhibit an impaired preference for social novelty that is normalized by CBS inhibition. (A): Schematic representation of the setup of the social preference paradigm. During acquisition, the arena was enriched with two identical transparent cylindrical cages for sociability; one cage contained a male conspecific, and the second one remained empty. (B): The time spent exploring either target during the 5-min acquisition trial was recorded and plotted herein. After 10 min, rats underwent a retention trial during which the previously encountered juvenile rat was placed in the previously empty cage and a second juvenile male rat -- unfamiliar with the test subject -- was added to the cylindrical cage that was previously occupied. The activity of the tested subjects in the arena was tracked for another 5 min. (C): Representative tracking maps that are annotated with the general path traveled and colored in dark purple along with the locations acquired for interacting with the novel and familiar conspecific in light orange and blue colors, respectively. (D) Preference Index for the novel social target (“Preference of social novelty”), calculated as the percent ratio of the time interacting with the novel conspecific over the total time allotted in social interaction during the retention trial. Each dot plot represents one animal. Each bar represents the mean ± SEM of 11 rats per experimental condition. Data acquired during acquisition and retention trials were, respectively, analyzed with a three-way and two-way ANOVA analysis followed by post hoc Bonferroni's multiple comparison t-test. *p≤0.05 shows significant differences between O and ST responses in WT rats; ^∂p≤0.05 or ^∂∂p≤0.01 shows significant differences in the time allotted to the object exploration within control rats (either saline-treated or AOAA-treated); ^##p≤0.01 shows significant effect of AOAA in Dup(Rno20)Yah, indicating normalization of the animals' social novelty preference. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)