Animal care

All animal procedures were approved by the University of Alabama at Birmingham Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. Systemic, constitutive KL–deficient (KO, 129S1/SvImJ) and systemic, constitutive KL–overexpressing (OE, C57BL/6J) mice were obtained from M. Kuro–o (University of Texas Southwestern). We purchased Thy1–GFP (C57BL/6J) from the Jackson Laboratory (Stock #007788; Bar Harbor, ME). All mice were allowed access to food and water ad libitum and housed at 26.6°C with humidity maintained at ≥40%. Beginning at 5-weeks of age, we supplemented KL–deficient mice with Bacon Softies or Nutra–Gel (BioServ, Frenchtown, NJ). We previously reported no effect of sex on KL-deficient mouse behavioral performance (Laszczyk et al. 2017). Herein, sex balanced groups of animals were used where possible, but sex was not determined in cultured neurons taken from P1 pups.