Fig. 6: Early tactile stimulation impacts the NAc, affecting both the methylation levels of receptor genes and its transcriptomic profile.

a Comparison of Drd1 promoter methylation levels. b Comparison of Drd2 promoter methylation levels. c Comparison of Nr3c1 promoter methylation levels. d Comparison of Oxtr promoter methylation levels. e Principal Component Analysis (PCA) plot of the Nac, depicting the clustering of samples from the Con, TP and TP + BB groups. f The number of significantly upregulated or downregulated differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between different groups. g, h Volcano plots of DEGs comparing TP vs. Con and TP + BB vs. TP, respectively. The plots feature horizontal lines at –log10 (false discovery rate, FDR) = 1 and vertical lines at log2 (fold change, FC) = 0, demarcating positive versus negative regulation. Blue dots represent downregulated DEGs, while red dots represent upregulated DEGs. i Hierarchical clustered heatmaps of DEGs. The expression levels were log10 transformed, with high levels of expression indicated in red and low expression in blue. j, k Gene Ontology (GO) classifications of DEGs comparing TP vs. Con and TP + BB vs. TP, respectively. P-value ≤ 0.05. *P < 0.05 (n = 3 for each group, with each sample comprising 3 mice).