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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2008 Oct 20.
Published in final edited form as: Neuron. 2008 May 22;58(4):584–598. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2008.03.008

Figure 2. Glutamate receptor activation is necessary and sufficient for estradiol-induced increases in dendritic spines.

Figure 2

(a) Left upper panel: Estradiol treatment induced a 3-fold increase in spinophilin and pretreatment with the AMPA receptor antagonist NBQX, completely blocked the increase (ANOVA F3,17=7.04; *p<0.05, n = 5−6 group compared to all other groups).

Right upper panel: In a separate experiment, estradiol again significantly increased spinophilin and pre-treatment with the NMDA receptor antagonist, MK801, also completely prevented the increase (ANOVA F3,13= 13.29; *p < 0.05 compared to all other groups, n = 5−6 / group).

(b) Treatment of females on the day of birth with either estradiol or NMDA to directly activate NMDA receptors significantly increased spinophilin levels within 6 hours (ANOVA F2,20=7.70; *p< 0.05 compared to vehicle; Veh n=9, E2 n=9, NMDA n=5).