“…In addition, the immunostaining result indicates that Shank3-positive punctate structures are observed on the dendrites of GAD67-positive GABAergic neurons in cultured hippocampal neurons. Given that Shank3 is an important component of the postsynaptic density at excitatory synapses (Sheng and Kim, 2000 ; Sheng and Sala, 2001 ; Boeckers et al, 2002 ; Sheng and Hoogenraad, 2007 ; Grabrucker et al, 2011 ; Sheng and Kim, 2011 ; Jiang and Ehlers, 2013 ; Sala et al, 2015 ; Monteiro and Feng, 2017 ; Mossa et al, 2017 ), the lack of Shank3 in dorsolateral striatal neurons may suppress normal development and maturation of the postsynaptic density, dendritic spines, and excitatory synapses. In addition, previous studies have reported a strong decrease in dendritic spine density in dorsal striatal neurons in Shank3B −/− mice (Peca et al, 2011 ), further suggesting that the decreased mEPSC frequency may be a consequence of postsynaptic changes.…”