Fig. 3: Mouse fear memory retrieval-associated transcriptome changes and human PTSD reexperiencing-associated transcriptome changes.

A IA memory retrieval rapidly induced gene expression changes in the mouse dorsal hippocampus. Volcano plot showing 3997 upregulated (log₂ fold change > 0.38, p < 0.05, red) and 3140 downregulated (log₂ fold change < −0.38, p < 0.05, blue) genes in the dorsal hippocampus of the reactivated group compared to the non-reactivated group. B Relationship between human PTSD reexperiencing-associated expression changes and mouse fear memory retrieval-associated expression changes. All of the 16,721 genes analyzed in both humans (i.e., the female PTSD patients) and mice are included in this figure. The x-axis represents the -log₁₀(p) of correlations between human PTSD reexperiencing symptoms and blood gene expression levels measured by microarray. The y-axis represents the -log₁₀(p) of expression change after fear memory retrieval in mouse hippocampus measured by RNA-sequencing. Blue dots indicate those genes that show the same (consistent) direction of change in expression (i.e., either upregulation or downregulation) between humans and mice, while orange dots indicate those genes that show the opposite (inconsistent) direction of change in expression between humans and mice. C, D Consistency between human PTSD reexperiencing-associated expression changes and mouse fear memory retrieval-associated expression changes. C Pie chart showing the proportion of consistently vs. inconsistently regulated genes between human and mouse data for the 413 overlapping genes. The four (i.e., 2 × 2) patterns by upregulation and downregulation for humans and mice are distinguished. D Relationship between human PTSD reexperiencing-associated expression changes and mouse fear memory retrieval-associated expression changes for the 413 genes. The x-axis represents standardized correlation coefficients between human PTSD reexperiencing symptoms and blood gene expression levels. The y-axis represents standardized fold change after fear memory retrieval in mouse hippocampus.