SOCS3 and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: To determine whether SOCS3 levels are increased in different level of spinal cord before and after the disease onset of ALS, we first examined the expression levels of SOCS3 in the cervical spinal cord at both the pre-symptomatic stage (9 weeks of age) and early symptomatic stage (16 weeks of age) of ALS mice using IHC analyses.