Fig. 1: Total RNA-seq revealed dependance of Meg3-ex10 expression on the success of social fear extinction within the mouse septum.

A Schematic overview of the social fear conditioning (SFC) paradigm. After social fear acquisition (Ext−) on day 1 unconditioned (SFC−/Ext−) and conditioned (SFC+/Ext−) animals are subjected to the social fear extinction training (Ext+) on day 2; SFC+ animals are separated according to the success of social fear extinction training resulting in those with successful (SFC+/Ext+/suc) and those with unsuccessful fear extinction still being fearful at the end of the extinction training (SFC+/Ext+/unsuc). B Volcano plot across data sets for transcript-based differential expression analysis of SFC+/Ext+/unsuc vs. SFC+/Ext+/suc mice. The x-axis refers to the log2 fold change of the RNA transcript in SFC+/Ext+/unsuc vs. SFC+/Ext+/suc mice, while the y-axis shows the -log10 adjusted p-value of that comparison. Thresholds are set to p < 10−3 and |log2 fold change | > 1 (doted lines). C Investigation time of three non-social and six social stimuli during social fear extinction training of SFC+/Ext+ mice with successful and unsuccessful fear extinction, and of SFC−/Ext+ control mice that were used for validating Meg3-ex10 RNA-seq data (*p < 0.05 SFC−/Ext+ vs. SFC+/Ext+/suc and SFC+/Ext+/unsuc; #p < 0.05 SFC+/Ext+/unsuc vs. SFC−/Ext+ and SFC+/Ext+/suc, two-way ANOVA, Bonferroni multiple comparison tests). D SFC+/Ext+/unsuc mice expressed lower levels of septal Meg3-ex10 at 90 min after extinction training (*p < 0.05 vs. SFC−/Ext+ and SFC+/Ext+/suc, one-way ANOVA, Bonferroni multiple comparison tests). E Septal Meg3-ex10 expression positively correlated with the mean investigation time during exposure to social stimulus 5 (s5) and s6 of the social fear extinction training (p = 0.0068, Pearson’s r = 0.46). Circles: individual data points. Data represent (C) mean investigation time ±  SEM, D mean fold change + SEM vs. SFC−/Ext+ and (E) relative Meg3-ex10 expression levels plotted against mean investigation time of the fifth (s5) and sixth social stimuli (s6). Group sizes: n(SFC−/Ext+) = 29, n(SFC+/Ext+/suc) = 19, n(SFC+/Ext+/unsuc) = 14.