Fig. 2

The effect of ketamine on apoptosis is dose-dependent. a Representative confocal images of coronal S1 sections immunolabelled for CC3 (green), and co-stained for nuclei with TOPRO (red) to visualize cortical lamination. Treatment conditions as indicated. Cortical layers are indicated by Roman numerals, and borders between cortical layers marked using dotted lines. Scale bar is 200 μm. b Quantitation of the number of CC3⁺ cells per mm² S1, treatment conditions as indicated. The number of CC3⁺ cells increased with ketamine dosage. ^* P < 0.05, ^*** P < 0.001, n.s., not significant, using one-way ANOVA followed by Turkey’s multiple comparison test. c The distribution pattern of CC3⁺ cells in different cortical layers was not significantly affected by ketamine dosage. n.s., not significant, using two-way ANOVA followed by Bonferroni post hoc test. The results for PBS, Keta 30 mg/kg and Keta 30 mg/kg + Dex groups are the same as those presented in Fig. 1b and d. 3–6 mice were used per condition, 10 brain slices from each mouse were quantitated. Data are shown as the mean ± SEM