Erratum for the research article: "Neurotransmitter switching in the adult brain regulates behavior"

From: Subject: Date: To: Cc: Nick Spitzer nspitzer@ucsd.edu Erratum for Dulcis et al., Science. 2013; 340(6131):449. March 26, 2015 at 5:40 PM pstern@science-int.co.uk Davide Dulcis ddulcis@gmail.com Dear Peter, Davide and I have been extending the study of neurotransmitter switching that we published in Science in 2013, investigating the effect of aging on the ability of neurons to undergo this plasticity. We've examined rats at 1 month, 3 months, 12 months and 18 months. The results are interesting, although disappointing for people in my age bracket, because we observe a clear decline with age. However our stereological counts of sections from additional 3 month old animals, as well as recounts of the sections on which the results in the Science article are based (3 month old animals), reveal a consistent error in quantification: the published values were consistently overestimated by a factor of 6. Accordingly, we submit the following erratum for publication, to set the values straight. Best regards, Nick Science. 2013; 340(6131):449. Erratum submitted by authors. Incorrect y-axis scale in several figures. Erratum. In our 26 April 2013 article, “Neurotransmitter switching in the adult brain regulates behavior” (1), a consistent error in the stereological quantification of the number of neurons per nucleus led to overestimation of values on the y-axis of Figures 1A,D,E, 2A, and 5D,F by a factor of 6. A reexamination by Dulcis and Spitzer of the original samples we used shows that the stereological algorithm was incorrectly calculated. The y-axis labels (x1,000) should be divided by 6). D. Dulcis, P. Jamshidi, S. Leutgeb, N.C. Spitzer References 1. D. Dulcis, P. Jamshidi, S. Leutgeb, N.C. Spitzer. Science 340, 449 (2013).