Fig. 3: Altered activity of VIP and Nkx2-1 interneurons on the SERT-KO background. | Nature Communications

Fig. 3: Altered activity of VIP and Nkx2-1 interneurons on the SERT-KO background.

From: Perinatal serotonin signalling dynamically influences the development of cortical GABAergic circuits with consequences for lifelong sensory encoding

Fig. 3

a Schematic illustrating the contribution of Nkx2-1 and VIP interneuron subtypes to bottom-up, feed-forward and top-down inhibition, respectively. Representative fields of view of mouse S1BF expressing GCaMP6s under the hSyn promoter and tdTomato in (b) VIP (n = 18 mice imaged) or (c) Nkx2-1 (n = 14 mice imaged) interneurons (scale bar 100 µm). Violin plots of average (d) amplitude, (e) frequency, and (f) duration of VIP interneuron calcium responses during H-events in SERT-WT/Het/KO mice at P7-10 (d, Kruskal–Wallis p < 0.001, pairwise WT-HET: p = 0.087, WT-KO: p < 0.001, HET-KO: p < 0.001, e, f, Kruskal–Wallis p < 0.001, pairwise WT-HET: p < 0.001, WT-KO: e, p < 0.001 f, p = 0.037). g Whisker response amplitudes of VIP interneurons in SERT-WT/Het/KO mice from P8 to P16 (*p < 0.05 Tukey HSD test). h, i VIP whisker response trace (left) and amplitude (right) of SERT-WT/Het/KO mice during the Th-SERT (h, Kruskal–Wallis p < 0.001, pairwise WT-HET: p = 0.9612, WT-KO: p = 0.029, HET-KO: p = 0.004) and the Adult SERT period (i, Kruskal–Wallis p < 0.047, pairwise WT-HET: p = 0.1593, WT-KO: p < 0.001, HET-KO: p < 0.001). Violin plot of average (j) amplitude, (k) frequency, and (l) duration of Nkx2-1 interneuron calcium responses during H-events in SERT-WT/Het mice at P7-10 (Mann–Whitney U-test j, p < 0.001; k, p = 0.019; l p = 0.039). m Whisker response amplitudes of Nkx2-1+ interneurons in SERT-WT/Het mice from P7 to P16 (* p < 0.05 Tukey HSD test). Nkx2-1 whisker response trace (left) and amplitude (right) of SERT-WT/Het/KO mice during the Th-SERT (n, Mann–Whitney U-test p = 0.001) and the Adult SERT period (o, Mann–Whitney U-test p = 0.053). VIP sample sizes are 201 cells from 4 animals (WT), 1361 cells from 9 animals (Het), and 546 cells from 5 animals (KO) (d–i), while Nkx2-1 are 555 cells from 6 animals (WT) and 1020 cells from 8 animals (Het) (j–o). Traces (h, i, n, o) and error bar (g, m) plots are presented as mean ± SEM. Violin plots are presented as mean values ± max/min value.

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