Fig. 2

Overexpression of CARS in hippocampal neurons induces memory deficits in C57BL/6J mice. a Representative images showing CARS-ir neurons in the cortex and the hippocampus of C57BL/6J mice. White arrowheads denote neurons expressing CARS. b Percentages of neurons expressing CARS in the cortex and the hippocampus of C57BL/6J mice. c Schedule of viral injection and subsequent behavioral tests. d Left: Illustration of the injection sites. Right: Representative image of the infected hippocampus. e Immunostaining of NeuN in the hippocampus after the hSynapsin promoter-driven expression of CARS. f Left: Western blotting of CARS protein in the hippocampus of CARS-overexpressing and control mice. Right: Quantification of CARS protein level in the hippocampus. g Spontaneous alternation behavior in the Y-maze test (YMT). h–j Ratios of distance moved (h), as well as time spent (i) and entries (j) in the novel arm in the YMT. k Representative activity traces of the control and CARS-overexpressing mice in the YMT. l–n The exploration time on familiar and novel objects (l), discrimination index (m) and total distance moved (n) in the novel object recognition (NOR) test. o Representative activity traces of the control and the CARS-overexpressing mice in the NOR test. Data are shown as mean ± SEM; *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001