2.5 Experiment design and behavioral assessment
Animals with surgery-related infections were excluded. Then, the rats
were randomly grouped into six groups, with six animals (n=6) in each
group presented in Figure 1A. The cannula placements of the lateral
ventricle are shown in Figure 1B. Animal body weight and food
consumption were measured daily. The water intake was measured daily
from day 1 to day 5 before food and water deprivation. All behavioral
tests except the novel object recognition test were conducted on day 7
and performed as previously described(Ding, Cui et al., 2021; Ye, Cui et
al., 2018). On day 7, the open field test was performed at 9:00 AM, the
sucrose preference test was performed at 12:00 PM, the
novelty-suppressed feeding test was performed at 2:00 PM, and the forced
swim test was performed at 4:00 PM. The novel object recognition test
was performed at 9:00 AM on day 8. The rats were decapitated immediately
after the behavioral tests on day 8, and the tissue was used for western
blot and HPLC‒MS/MS. The other three same experiments with six animals
(n=6) in each group were used for ELISA, immunofluorescence staining and
Golgi staining.