Fig. 2: CCN1 regulates binocular zone remodelling and excitation.
From: Astrocyte CCN1 stabilizes neural circuits in the adult brain
a, Top, experimental setup for overexpression of CCN1 or tdTomato (tdT) in critical period astrocytes (grey). Bottom, Arc induction assay. BZ, binocular zone; WT, wild type. b, Representative image of Arc smFISH. Left, 12 h after ME. Right, 4 days after ME (4 days ME). Scale bars, 1 mm. Dashed yellow lines indicate Arc binocular zone width. c, Quantification of Arc activation width. n = 4 mice per group. d, cKO of Ccn1 in adult mouse astrocytes by intraperitoneal tamoxifen injection. Created in BioRender. Allen Lab (2025) https://BioRender.com/cp7gqpp. e, Representative images of Arc smFISH in Ccn1-cKO visual cortex. Scale bars, 1 mm. f, Arc activation width. n = 6 mice per group. c,f, Two-way ANOVA with post hoc Tukey tests on mouse averages. *, significant P value. Data are mean ± s.e.m. Symbols indicate mouse averages. g, Whole-cell patch clamping of layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons. h, Representative sEPSCs. i, Average inter-event interval. j, Average amplitude. tdT no MD: n = 16 cells, 6 mice; tdT MD: n = 17 cells, 5 mice; CCN1 no MD: n = 17 cells, 7 mice; CCN1 MD: n = 18 cells, 7 mice. k, Representative sIPSCs. l, Average inter-event interval. m, Average amplitude. tdT no MD: n = 17 cells, 7 mice; tdT MD: n = 18 cells, 7 mice; CCN1 no MD: n = 15 cells, 7 mice; CCN1 MD: n = 18 cells, 8 mice. i,j,l,m, Unfilled symbols represent cells and filled symbols represent mouse averages. Data are mean ± s.e.m. Nested one-way ANOVA with post hoc Sidak tests on mouse averages. *, significant P value. n, Representative z-projection of WFA around parvalbumin (PV)-positive cells in critical period visual cortex. Scale bar, 20 µm. o, Integrated WFA density around parvalbumin-expressing cells. Dots represent cells. tdT no MD, n = 204 cells; tdT MD, n = 197 cells; CCN1 no MD, n = 228 cells; CCN1 MD, n = 193 cells. Five mice per group. Kruskal–Wallis test with post hoc Dunn’s tests on cells. *, significant P value. Data are median ± 95% confidence interval. a.u., arbitrary units.
