2.1. Subjects
Male Swiss CD-1 mice (Charles River, Lyon, France) weighing 25–30 g (8
weeks-old) were randomly assigned to an experimental group and used for
the behavioural experiments. The CD1 mouse strain was selected for its
optimal sensitivity to the psychostimulant effects of cocaine (McKerchar
et al., 2005). For the synaptosomal preparation, male Sprague-Dawley
rats (Janvier, Le Genest, France) weighing 225–250 g (2-3 months-old)
were used. This rat strain has been used widely to obtain pure rat brain
synaptosomes (Kolanos et al., 2015; Gannon et al., 2018; Lopez-Arnau et
al., 2019; Saha et al., 2019). The animals were housed in
temperature-controlled conditions (22 ± 1°C) under a 12 h light/dark
cycle and had free access to food (standard laboratory diet, Panlab SL,
Barcelona, Spain) and drinking water. All animal care and experimental
protocols in this study complied with the guidelines of the European
Community Council (2010/62/EU) and were approved by the Animal Ethics
Committee of the University of Barcelona under the supervision of the
Autonomous Government of Catalonia. Efforts were made to minimize
suffering and reduce the number of used animals. All studies involving
animals are reported in accordance with the ARRIVE and BJP guidelines
for reporting experiments involving animals (McGrath and Lilley, 2015).