Fig. 1

Surgical trauma, but not general anesthesia, induced postoperative cognitive deficit in aged mice. A Diagram of the experimental design for the neurocognitive assessment with the open field and fear conditioning test. Right carotid artery exposure surgery was performed on 0 day. The mice received the open field test and fear conditioning training on 2 days after anesthesia plus surgery. The context-relate test was conducted on 3 days after surgery. Two hours later, the tone-related test was then performed. B Total distance of movement in open field test. C Number of center crossings in open field test. D Freezing time for context-related and tone-related memory in fear conditioning test. *P < 0.05 versus control group, ^&P < 0.05 versus anesthesia group by one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey post hoc test. n = 10. Data are represented as mean ± SD