The immunostaining was assessed at five brain coronal levels, be- tween − 1.46 anterior and − 3.08 mm posterior to Bregma, according to the atlas of Paxinos and Watson (n = 8 animals per group). Specifi- cally, we captured 1–2 images per section with 10× objective in the subiculum and CA1 hippocampal subfield using a Leica DM2500 confo- cal laser microscope. A threshold optical density that best discriminated the staining from the background was obtained using ImageJ 1.36b im- aging software. The data represents the average value obtained by the analysis of images of the hippocampus (subiculum and CA1). All histo- logical assessments were performed by an examiner blinded to sample identities.