2.6 Statistical analysis
In all the experiments, mice in the age of 8-10 weeks were randomly
selected as biological replicates to make the study reliable. For
western-blot, the darkness of blotting-bands was integrated using ImageJ
(NIH). For immunostaining, the images collected from confocal microscopy
were processed by ZEN (Zeiss) and for further cell numbering or
fluorescent intensity integration in ImageJ. The waveform plots exported
from BioSigRZ software in ABR test were line-smoothed by Origin9
(OriginLab). Other graphs were prepared in GraphPad Prism software
(GraphPad). Normality of the data was tested using the Shapiro-Wilk
normality test. Nonparametric data with multiple comparisons were
analyzed by Kruskal-Wallis one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed
by Holm’s Stepdown Bonferroni procedure for adjusted P -values.
The Mann-Whitney t test was used for comparison between two
groups. Data with normal distribution were analyzed by one-way ANOVA
with Dunnett’s post-test or Tukey’s correction for multiple comparisons
as described in the figure legends. The data are presented as the
average mean ± standard error (SEM) for data that were normally
distributed or median and interquartile range for data that were not
normally distributed for continuous variables. For all comparison,P and n represent the value of significance and the number
of mice, respectively. P < 0.05 was considered
statistically significant. Data were analyzed using GraphPad Prism
software. Finally, the results of some statistics were presented as
graphs of boxplots (whiskers), and some were presented as histograms
using GraphPad Prism. The F statistic as well as the degrees of
freedom and the P value were descripted in the Results section
and the corresponding figure legends.