Fig. 5: The high density of dendritic spines and the emergence of associative memory cells in intruder mice with fear memory and anxiety.

A illustrates the confocal images of the coronal section of the brain from C57 mice with the microinjections of AAV2/8-CMV-tdTomato into the auditory cortex (left panel) and AAV2/8-CMV-BFP into the thalamus (right panel). B shows sample images of S1-Tr cortical neuronal dendrites in each group. A neuronal dendrite in the intruder group (right panel) receives convergent synapse innervations from the auditory cortex (red boutons) as well as the thalamus (blue boutons), whereas the dendrite in a control group (left panel) receives no synapse contacts. C illustrates the statistical comparisons of spine numbers of S1-Tr cortical neurons from the mice in the groups of control (blue bar) and intruder (red bar; mean ± SEM, students’ t test, ***p < 0.001). D illustrates the statistical comparisons of spines’ diameter of S1-Tr cortical neurons from the mice in the groups of control (blue bar) and intruder (red bar; mean ± SEM, students’ t test, ****p < 0.0001). E shows the statistical analyzes about synapse contacts from the auditory cortex per 100 μm dendrite in the S1-Tr cortices from the mice of control group (blue bar) and intruder group (red bar; mean ± SEM, students’ t test, ****p < 0.0001). F shows the statistical analyzes about synapses contacts from thalamus per 100 µm dendrites in the S1-Tr cortices from the mice of control group (blue bar) and intruder group (red bar; mean ± SEM, students’ t test, ****p < 0.0001). G shows the ratio of boutons from the auditory cortex (red spots), thalamus (blue spots), and spine numbers (yellow spots) in the S1-Tr cortex, between intruder and control mice. (mean ± SEM, ANOVA, ****p < 0.0001). H illustrates the statistical analysis of ratio of boutons and spines in S1-Tr cortex from the mice in the groups of control (blue bar) and intruder (red bar; mean ± SEM, students’ t test, ****p < 0.0001).