Fig. 3.
Sevoflurane exposure in postnatal day (PND) 16 to 17 mice does not induce long-term behavioral abnormalities. (A, B) Sevoflurane-exposed mice exhibit normal activity and spend a comparable amount of time in the center region in the open field test (n = 16 for both groups; independent Student’s t test). (C) Sevoflurane-exposed mice spend a comparable time in the light compartment of the light-dark box test (n = 16 for both groups; independent Student’s t test). (D) Sevoflurane-exposed mice spend a comparable time in the open arms of the elevated plus maze (n = 20 for control and 17 for sevoflurane exposure; independent Student’s t test). (E to G) Sevoflurane exposure did not affect sociability in the three-chamber test. (E) Representative heat map images of the three-chamber test. (F, G) Quantification of the results in the three-chamber test (n = 16 for both groups; independent Student’s t test). (H) Sevoflurane-exposed mice displayed similar levels of memory in the novel object recognition test (n = 20 for control and 17 for sevoflurane exposure; Kruskal–Wallis test). (I to K) Sevoflurane exposure did not affect learning and memory in the fear chamber test. (I) The conditioning slope was not effected by sevoflurane exposure (n = 16 for both groups; linear mixed effect modeling with a fixed effect for slope and group. Correlated random intercept and random slope term were incorporated into the model). (J, K) Mice exposed to sevoflurane displayed comparable contextual- and cued-fear test performance (n = 16 for both groups; independent Student’s t test and Welch t test). Values are presented as mean ± SD. n.s. = not significant.