Fig. 2: Cocaine increases synaptic Zn²⁺ release and uptake in the striatum.

A Representative synchrotron X-ray fluorescence microspectroscopy (µSXRF) Zn²⁺ maps from vehicle- or cocaine-treated mice. B Cocaine-treated mice had significantly greater Zn²⁺ (AU-arbitrary units) than vehicle-treated mice in caudate putamen (CPu) and nucleus accumbens (NAc). C Representative Timm- and cresyl violet- co-stained sections from a wild-type (WT) and D a ZnT3 knockout (KO) mouse. E Zn²⁺ content measured using TXRF in wild-type and ZnT3 knockout mice exposed to vehicle (VEH), a single cocaine injection (SC) or repeated cocaine injections (RC) injections. F Wild-type mice exposed to RC had significantly greater Zn²⁺ levels compared to VEH-treated WT mice. G PET experimental timeline and representative horizontal ⁶⁵Zn PET/CT images from wild-type and ZnT3 knockout mice scanned at 14 days after ⁶⁵ZnCl₂ administration. H ⁶⁵ZnCl₂ brain uptake expressed as mean standard uptake value (mSUV) in wild-type and knockout mice scanned at 3, 7 and 14 days after injection. I Representative ⁶⁵ZnCl₂ autoradiograms from wild-type and ZnT3 knockout mice scanned using PET at day 15 after ⁶⁵ZnCl₂ administration and then euthanized for postmortem verification. J Statistical contrasts from voxel-wise statistical parametric mapping analyses from vehicle- or cocaine-treated mice exposed to ⁶⁵ZnCl₂ PET imaging. ppm parts per million. *p ≤ 0.05, **p ≤ 0.01, ***p ≤ 0.001. All data expressed as Mean ± SEM.