Fig. 6.

Reduction of endogenous kalirin expression decreases spine density on MSNs in the NAc. NAc slices (P8) were biolistically transfected with pCMS vector encoding GFP alone (A, A1, and C) or pCMS vector encoding GFP and Kal antisense (AS) (B, B1, and D) using a gene gun as described in the legend to Fig. 5. Slices were fixed with 4% paraformaldehyde 72 h after transfection and imaged with confocal microscopy. Insets A1 and B1 show higher magnification images of boxed areas in A and B, respectively. Scale bars (A and B), 15 μm; (C and D), 5 μm. Spine density was measured using Neurolucida as described previously (Ma et al., 2003) (E). **, p < 0.01, Student's t test, n = 10.