Rats were euthanized by live decapitation and whole brains were rapidly extracted and briefly flash frozen in 2-methylbutane on dry ice and stored at -80°C until further processing. 2mm-deep bilateral NAc tissue punches were collected at approximately Bregma +2.42 in a cryostat at -16°C. Punches were immediately placed in pre-chilled sample dissociation tubes (10x Genomics, 2000564) and kept at -80°C until nuclei isolation. Nuclei were isolated using the 10x Genomics Nuclei Isolation kit (PN-1000493) according to manufacturer's instructions. Single-nucleus libraries were generated using the Chromium GEM-X Single Cell 3' Kit v4 (10x Genomics, PN-1000691). Nuclei (44,592) were sequenced on the Illumina NovaSeq 6000 at the UAB Heflin Genomics core to an average read depth of ~23,000 reads per nuclei.