Psychostimulant drug abuse is becoming increasingly popular and costly globally [
1,
2]. Psychostimulant drugs of abuse, such as methamphetamine, amphetamine, and cocaine, have been associated with dopamine (DA) receptor dysfunction, improper synaptic transmission, and other neuronal perturbations that may contribute to addiction pathology [
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8]. Psychostimulants drive hyper-dopaminergic signaling within the striatum by increasing DA concentrations and enhancing DA transmission [
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14]. When low doses of psychostimulants are administered chronically, response to the drug also increases, causing progressive potentiation of motor programs, a process known as behavioral sensitization [
15,
16]. Thus, DA plays a critical role in basal ganglia regulated motor programs [
17,
18,
19,
20,
21,
22].
The striatum is the largest structure within the basal ganglia and has been shown to play a role in disease states, such as Huntington and Parkinson Disease (HD and PD, respectively), and neurological disorders like obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and drug addiction/abuse [
23,
24,
25,
26,
27,
28]. The striatum is divided into two main regions: The dorsal striatum (dStr) and the ventral striatum (vStr), which includes the nucleus accumbens (NAc) and the olfactory tubercle (OT). The dStr is innervated by dopaminergic projections arising from the substantia nigra (SN) and has been functionally described as a modulator of motor domains specifically involving action selection and initiation [
29,
30]. The vStr is innervated by dopaminergic projections from the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and is involved in mediating reward and motivational domains [
31,
32,
33]. However, studies also suggest that there is significant overlap in motor and reward functional domains within the striatum [
34,
35]. Approximately 90–95% of the neuronal populations within the striatum are gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)-ergic medium spiny neurons (MSNs). There are two MSN subtypes within the striatum that are characteristically distinct based on physiological and structural properties, as well as differential expression of DA receptor subtypes and neuropeptide hormones [
36,
37,
38]. Differential expression of DA receptors allows for differential signaling within striatal MSNs. Studies have shown that characteristics and behaviors associated with striatal specific pathological maladies can occur when there is an imbalance in the activity and/or signaling between the two MSN classes [
14,
39,
40,
41]. Direct pathway MSNs (dMSNs) contain the D1 class of DA receptors, which are positively coupled to PKA signaling. Activation of dMSNs enhances basal ganglia related motor programs. Conversely, indirect pathway MSNs (iMSNs) contain the D2 class of DA receptors, which are negatively coupled to PKA signaling. Activation of iMSNs inhibits inappropriate basal ganglia regulated motor function [
42,
43,
44,
45]. Thus, the opposing functions of dMSNs and iMSNs are, in part, regulated by post-synaptic responses to DA-dependent signaling.
In the post-synaptic density (PSD) of MSNs, reversible protein phosphorylation is facilitated by kinase and phosphatase activity, contributing to competent neuronal signaling, communication, and synaptic plasticity. To achieve proper signaling, serine/threonine kinases phosphorylate substrates utilizing specific consensus sites; however, serine/threonine phosphatases, such as protein phosphatase 1 (PP1), associate with targeting proteins to attain specificity [
46,
47]. The most abundant targeting protein for PP1 in the PSD is spinophilin [
46,
48,
49,
50]. Spinophilin acts as a scaffolding protein by targeting PP1 to specific substrates; however, spinophilin can also inhibit the activity of PP1, driving changes in synaptic strength and plasticity [
48,
51,
52,
53]. Furthermore, spinophilin is enriched in the PSD of dendritic spines, and is essential for proper dendritic spine function by regulation of critical dendrite properties [
48,
54,
55,
56]. Changes in MSN dendritic spine density and morphology, perturbations in synaptic transmission and concomitant aberrant dopaminergic signaling are all major contributors to striatal disease states like drug addiction and myriad others [
23,
26,
27,
31,
57]. In addition, psychostimulant administration, which drives hyper-dopaminergic responses was shown to increase spinophilin expression in the striatum [
58,
59]. As stated above, alterations in DA levels will regulate DA receptor activity and downstream activation of kinases, such as PKA. Spinophilin is phosphorylated by PKA and PKA phosphorylation of spinophilin is known to decrease its binding to F-actin [
49,
60]. DA depletion, which decreases DA terminals in the striatum, modulates spinophilin interactions within the striatum. Specifically, there were increases in spinophilin binding to PP1; however, the interactions of spinophilin with a plurality of spinophilin-associated proteins (SpAPs) were decreased [
61,
62]. We have shown that whole-body spinophilin knockout (KO) mice do not undergo d-amphetamine-induced behavioral sensitization [
63]. However, how excessive DA signaling, as occurs following psychostimulant sensitization, modulates spinophilin interactions is unclear. Here we show that in contrast to DA depletion, amphetamine sensitization increases a majority of striatal spinophilin interactions. Moreover, in our preliminary studies using a novel transgenic mouse line that allows for Cre-dependent expression of an hemagglutinin (HA)-tagged form of spinophilin, we observed both pan-MSN and putative cell-specific alterations in spinophilin interactions following amphetamine treatment. Together, these data delineate alterations in spinophilin interactions that may contribute to psychostimulant-induced pathologies.