Fig. 8

SCF + G-CSF treatment in the chronic phase of severe TBI enhances pruning of synapses by microglia in the hippocampal CA1. a Experimental flowchart. b Representative orthogonal views of confocal images show that Iba1 positive microglia engulf PSD-95 and Gephyrin positive synapses. c–f Quantification data show that SCF + G-CSF treatment enhances microglia in engulfing PSD-95 (c, d) and Gephyrin (e, f) positive synapses in both the contralateral (c, e) and ipsilateral (d, f) hippocampal CA1. The red boxes in panels c–f indicate the imaging areas in the bilateral hippocampal CA1 regions for data analysis. Student’s t test. Mean ± SEM. *p < 0.05, ***p < 0.001, ****p < 0.0001. TBI-vehicle: n = 24 microglia (in 4 mice), TBI-SCF + G-CSF: n = 30 microglia (in 5 mice)