Fig. 5: Early life oxytocin treatment rescues social discrimination deficit in adult BWT mice. | Molecular Psychiatry

Fig. 5: Early life oxytocin treatment rescues social discrimination deficit in adult BWT mice.

From: A short period of early life oxytocin treatment rescues social behavior dysfunction via suppression of hippocampal hyperactivity in male mice

Fig. 5

a Left, diagram shows the peptide ELISA assay. Right, oxytocin (OXT) and vasopressin (AVP) peptide levels in hippocampus (control: n = 19 mice; BWT: n = 20 mice. OXT: P = 0.0174, Mann–Whitney U test. AVP, P = 0.8851, unpaired t-test). b Oxytocin mRNA level in the hypothalamus in P14 mice with or without whisker trimming at P12 (control: n = 6, BWT: n = 7; P = 0.0449; unpaired t-test). c Schematic shows intraventricular injection of OXT. d Time spent sniffing the mouse chamber or the empty chamber in sociability test (vehicle: n = 9 mice, P = 0.0039;. OXT: n = 11 mice, P = 0.0010; Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-rank test). e–g Social preference test. e Representative heatmaps. f, g Time spent (f, Vehicle: n = 9 mice, P = 0.2369, paired t-test. OXT: n = 11 mice, P = 0.0010, Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-rank test) and preference (g, P = 0.0008, Mann–Whitney U test) for interacting with a stranger mouse versus a familiar mouse. h Representative spontaneous mEPSC recordings in dCA3 cells from vehicle (upper) and OXT groups (lower). i, j mEPSC frequencies (i, P = 0.0306) and mEPSC amplitudes (j, P = 0.0304) in dCA3 (vehicle, n = 9 neurons, N = 3 mice; OXT, n = 8 neurons, N = 3 mice). Unpaired t-test. *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.001; NS, not significant. Data presented as mean ± SEM.

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