Fig. 3

Four weeks old CTCF-cKO mice exhibit reduction in anxiety-related behavior with no motor problems. Four weeks old CTCF- cKO (n = 12) and WT (n = 10) (A, B) performance in locomotors behavioral tests. time spent on rotarod (A) and Distance move total (B), were not different between CTCF-cKO and WT mice. C, D Results of the light/dark transition test. CTCF cKO mice spent greater time in light zone (**p = 0.007) C and higher number of entries into light zone (*p = 0.022) (D). E–G Results of the elevated plus maze test. CTCF cKO mice spent less time in close arms (*p = 0.028) and more time in the open arms (*p = 0.044) (E), moving less in the close arm (**p = 0.002) (F) and had lower number of entries into close arm (*p = 0.043) (G). (H, I) CTCF-cKO mice showed less freezing 24 h after training in the contextual fear conditioning test (*p = 0.013) (H) and tendency of decline freezing during tones in the cue-dependent fear conditioning test (I) (WT n = 6, CTCF cKO n = 12). J, K Results of the three-chambered social test. CTCF-cKO mice displayed no preference to spend time in a chamber with a stranger mouse compered to control group (*p = 0.046) (J) and specific in the sniffing area (***p = 0.0002) (K) comparison to empty chambers. two-tailed, paired t test. Values in graphs are expressed as the mean ± SEM