assays of basal synaptic properties in a manner that permits cross preparation comparisons. Ideally, it would be valuable to combine the advantages of both in vivo and ex vivo approaches while minimizing their limitations. An obvious approach to accomplish this in the service of elucidating the modifications caused by drugs of abuse at known sets of synapses will be to express channelrhodopsin (ChR2) in the specific brain regions that project to NAc in BAC transgenic mice and then prepare acute slices from these animals following in vivo drug exposure. Many labs worldwide, including the authors’ labs, are taking this approach with good success.
