Fig. 6: Structural plasticity of CA1 and CA3 neurons in response to 40 Hz light treatment.

a A diagram of CA1 and CA3 areas where two-photon images were taken and shown in panel c. b Camera lucida of a CA1 pyramidal neuron for Sholl analysis. Scale bar = 100 μm. c Representative pyramidal neurons in CA1 of four groups (yellow colored lines) were put together using a z-stack of over 500 optical sections (6 repeats from n = 3 mice in each group). Scale bars = 50 μm. d Representative two-photon images of stubby, mushroom, and thin-formed dendritic spines (top panels) of the apical dendrites of Thy1-YFP mice of Sham, Sham+LED, 2VO, and 2VO + LED groups at 3 d post-surgery (6 repeats from n = 4 mice). Scale bars = 5 μm. The percentage of stubby, mushroom and thin shaped boutons were averaged and shown in the lower panel of d (n = 4 mice). e–l Quantifications of the number of dendritic spines per unit length of the CA1 and CA3 apical and basal dendrites, respectively, at 3 d post-surgery (n = 6 slices/3 mice in each group). Data represent the mean ± SEM. Error bars indicate SEM. *indicates differences between the Sham group and 2VO group; ^# indicates differences between the 2VO group and 2VO + LED group. ^#P < 0.05, ^##P < 0.01, ***, ^###P < 0.001. The test used in e–l 2ANOVA with Tukey’s post hoc test. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.