Figure 1 | Scientific Reports

Figure 1

From: Ingestion of probiotic (Lactobacillus helveticus and Bifidobacterium longum) alters intestinal microbial structure and behavioral expression following social defeat stress

Figure 1

Probiotic intervention at a low dose increases susceptibility to social stress. (a) A timeline for the study is shown in (a). Following the acute defeat, hamsters treated with a low dose of the probiotic (n = 7) (blue dots) avoided a novel opponent more (b) and interacted with the opponent less (c) than did hamsters treated with a high dose of the probiotic (n = 20) (purple dots) or the placebo (n = 20) (orange dots) (*p < 0.05). Following repeated defeats, there were no significant differences in avoidance behavior between treatment groups (b), yet hamsters treated with the lose dose (n = 7) (blue dots) interacted with a novel opponent significantly less than did placebo-treated hamsters (n = 20) (orange dots) (c; *p < 0.05). Data presented as mean +/− standard error of the mean. Note that the videos for three animals in the low dose probiotic group were lost due to a technical problem, so the group n for behavioral analysis is lower than for the other measures analyzed.

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