Autism-Like Behaviours and Memory Deficits Result from a Western Diet in Mice

Figure 5

The high-cholesterol diet compromises the hippocampus-dependent performance. In the fear conditioning test, in comparison to control mice, the dietary-challenged group showed (a) significant decreased number of “good learners” ( versus that in the control group, Fisher’s exact test), (b) a strong tendency to a reduced time spent with freezing during recall of conditioning ( versus that in the control group, t-test), and (c) a significant decrease in time spent with freezing in a memory extinction protocol ( versus that in the control group, t-test). In the pellet displacement tube test, in comparison to control animals, mice exposed to the cholesterol-enriched diet showed significantly prolonged (d) latency of a displacement of the 1st pellet and (e) the duration of displacement of 50% pellets ( versus that in the control group, t-test) and (f) did not differ in the duration of a displacement of 100% pellets ( versus that in the control group, t-test). Control—standard diet, WD—high-cholesterol diet. Data are shown as mean ± SEM.