Fig. 7

Autophagy deficiency at weaning period leads to synaptic abnormalities. A Experimental design. On PND 21, the offspring of SD rats were intraperitoneally injected with 3 mg/kg 3-MA or saline for 7 consecutive days, and Golgi-Cox staining was conducted on PND 28. B–D Golgi-Cox staining of pyramidal neurons in the prefrontal cortex (B) and hippocampus (D), and the quantitative analysis of spine (C, E). The rats treated with 3-MA showed increased spine density compared to control rats. The right panels are high magnifications of the boxed area in the left panels (B, D), scale bar = 2 μm. n = 20 segments for each rat, and 3 rats for each group were analyzed. *p ≤ 0.05, **p ≤ 0.01, ***p ≤ 0.001. Data are presented as mean ± SEM