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Corticosterone drives behavioral inflexibility via plasticity-related gene expression in the dorsal striatum

GSE312440 Mus musculus (mouse) RNA-seq (gene expression) 71 samples Submitted 2025/12/05 Platform GPL34328
At a glance

RNA-seq (gene expression) · mouse · 71 samples

What it is
RNA-seq (gene expression)Gene activity measured by sequencing. The summary does not mention single-cell work, so this is most likely bulk: one average per sample, the usual starting point for comparing groups.
Organism
Mus musculus (mouse)
Samples
71 samples: 24 conditions, mostly in triplicateGroups are read from the sample names, not from the paper. Check the list below.
Data you can get
A processed table (series matrix) and supplementary files from NCBI; the raw sequencing reads from ENA. Which of these hold counts depends on the study, so check the file list.
Summary (written by the submitters)
Behavioral flexibility allows organisms to modify actions based on new information, such as shifts in reward value or availability, and is promoted by the dorsomedial striatum (DMS). In contrast, behavioral inflexibility provides efficiency and automaticity in familiar contexts, and is promoted by the dorsolateral striatum (DLS).
Read the full summary ↓
Importantly, chronic elevation of the primary stress hormone, corticosterone (CORT) in rodents or cortisol in humans, impairs behavioral flexibility through dendritic atrophy in the DMS, and promotes inflexible behavioral response strategies through dendritic outgrowth in the DLS. However, understanding of changes in gene expression underlying behavioral inflexibility is lacking. We used a food-motivated operant task in male and female mice to define gene changes that accompany the shift to inflexible behavior with CORT. We discovered that CORT-accelerated loss of behavioral flexibility is accompanied by decreased DMS- and increased DLS-specific synaptic plasticity gene expression, and that distinct genes are either differentially expressed or spliced in the transition to inflexible behavior. Splicing analysis suggests that repressed activity in the DMS during the transition to inflexible behavior may reflect both reduced expression and increased degradation of plasticity-related mRNA transcripts. Finally, given the ability of CORT to influence histone acetylation, we defined CORT-mediated H3K9ac enrichment profiles associated with synaptic plasticity gene regulation stratified by sex and striatal subregion. This study is the first to define CORT-driven epigenetic regulation in the DMS and DLS during the CORT-accelerated transition from flexible to inflexible behavior in male and female mice.
This dataset
Open GSE312440 in finder → Find more mouse RNA-seq datasets →
Download · which file do I need?

Direct links to NCBI and ENA, no account and no request form. Pick by what you want to do: take the small processed table to look, the supplementary files to re-analyse, or the original raw data to start over.

1 · Just have a look

Processed table

The series matrix: one table of values per sample as the submitters processed it. The smallest download, and it opens in Excel or R. Start here to see what the data look like.

Series matrix ↓
2 · Re-analyse it

Supplementary files

The count tables and other files the authors uploaded. Take only the samples you need, or the whole study as GSE312440_RAW.tar (it can run to tens of gigabytes).

All supplementary files ↗ Whole study · RAW.tar ↓
3 · Start from the raw reads

Raw sequencing reads

The original FASTQ files, straight from the sequencer, held at ENA. Large, and you align them yourself, so only choose this if you need to re-process the study from scratch.

Raw reads on ENA ↗

What the files usually look like: For RNA-seq the counts are usually a table among the supplementary files (look for 'counts', 'expression', 'FPKM' or 'TPM' in the file name). The series matrix of a sequencing study is sometimes nearly empty.

Also filed as BioProject PRJNA1373298 and SRA study SRP651181. Searching any of these in the dataset finder brings you back here.

NCBI GEO page ↗
Study design
24 conditions, mostly in triplicate
extended_female_dms_cort ×3 extended_female_dls_cort ×3 extended_male_dms_cort ×3 extended_male_dls_cort ×3 no-behavior_female_dms_vehicle ×3 no-behavior_female_dls_vehicle ×3 no-behavior_male_dms_vehicle ×3 no-behavior_male_dls_vehicle ×3 +16 more

Supports a between-group comparison across 71 samples.

How we read this: 24 replicated groups read from 71 sample titles; they account for 71 of them. These groups are guessed from the sample names, not taken from the paper, so check them against the sample list below before relying on them.

Samples in this study

+ 31 more — browse all 71 samples with per-sample file links →

Datasets on a similar topic

Search all mouse RNA-seq datasets in GEO →

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