Fig. 7: Disruption of microglial THIK-1 activation affects visual discrimination behavior.

a Schematic of the experimental procedure. FA false alarm, CR correct rejection. b Representative examples showing licking behaviors of mice presented with Go and No-Go stimuli on day 1 and day 5 of training. Note that mice exhibited faster licking onset after 5 days of training. Gray boxes indicate the waiting period, purple and green boxes indicate the response period, and dark dots represent licks. c Hit rate (n = 13 mice) and FA rate (n = 13 mice) during 5 days of training. Friedman test for Hit rate and FA rate. d Gradually improved performance in the visual discrimination task during 5 days of training (n = 13 mice). Note that the performance reached above 75% on day 4 and stayed above this level afterwards. e Significantly improved performance in the visual discrimination task after 5 days of training (Performance: day 1: 29.58 ± 5.30 vs day 5: 87.44 ± 2.13; two-sided paired t-test. Hit: day 1: 97.48 ± 0.93 vs day 5: 99.06 ± 0.43; two-sided Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-rank test. FA: day 1: 67.90 ± 5.30 vs day 5: 11.62 ± 1.98; two-sided paired t-test). f Representative examples showing licking behaviors of mice presented with Go and No-Go stimuli before (Ctrl) and after C101248 administration (C101248). g Performance was significantly reduced by C101248 application (Performance: Ctrl: 93.43 ± 3.43 vs C101248: 58.35 ± 5.63; two-sided paired t-test. Hit: Ctrl: 99.31 ± 0.69 vs C101248: 99.38 ± 0.63; two-sided Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-rank test. FA: Ctrl: 5.87 ± 2.84 vs C101248: 41.03 ± 5.84; two-sided paired t-test. n = 4 mice). h Representative examples showing licking behaviors of mice presented with Go and No-Go stimuli before (Ctrl) and after ACSF administration (ACSF). i Performance was comparable before and after ACSF application (Performance: Ctrl: 86.28 ± 5.54 vs ACSF: 85.00 ± 7.24; two-sided paired t-test. Hit: Ctrl: 99.68 ± 0.32 vs ACSF: 99.67 ± 0.33; two-sided Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-rank test. FA: Ctrl: 13.41 ± 5.40 vs ACSF: 14.66 ± 6.97; two-sided paired t-test. n = 4 mice). j Representative examples showing licking behaviors of WT and THIK-1 cKO mice presented with Go and No-Go stimuli. k Performance was significantly reduced by THIK-1 cKO in MGs (Performance: cKO: 32.53 ± 4.20 vs WT: 88.71 ± 2.47; two-sided unpaired t-test. Hit: cKO: 97.86 ± 1.12 vs WT: 99.71 ± 0.29; two-sided Mann–Whitney test. FA: cKO: 65.32 ± 4.04 vs WT: 11.00 ± 2.23; two-sided unpaired t-test. n = 5 mice). Statistical significance was assessed by two-sided two-way repeated-measures ANOVA for c and d. Error bars indicate SEM.