Many of the effects of cocaine involve the nucleus accumbens, or ventral striatum. Since preparation of purified PSDs from this relatively small region would require the use of multiple animals, we evaluated the effects of chronic cocaine on total lysates. Western blot analyses of nucleus accumbens extracts with the Kal-spectrin antibody revealed a 60% increase in Kal7 protein levels (Figure 9C); Kal9 levels were unchanged following cocaine treatment and Kal12 levels were too low for accurate quantification.
