Anatomy and Function of Synaptic Zinc in the Striatum
Date
2015-09-28
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Abstract
Synaptic zinc is located in many regions of the brain. One area that contains a high amount is the input center of the basal ganglia: the striatum. Environmental enrichment was used to examine potential changes in morphology of striatal cells of mice with (ZnT3 wildtype) and without (ZnT3 knockout) the zinc transporter (ZnT3) necessary to load zinc into vesicles. No changes were found in dendritic length for any regions of the striatum. However, all regions of the striatum showed an increase in spine density in both genotypes, with enriched ZnT3 KO mice having a greater increase in the nucleus accumbens region. ZnT3 mice were also tested on a battery of motor behavioural tasks. ZnT3 KO mice may be hyperactive, as evidenced by their performance on the pole task, and impulsive, as evidenced by their inaccurate performance on a skilled reach task, when compared to ZnT3 WT mice.
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Neuroscience
Citation
Thackray, S. E. (2015). Anatomy and Function of Synaptic Zinc in the Striatum (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/24841