The evolution in our understanding of opioid receptors and their subtypes is in- mately linked to the development of new pharmacological treatments for diseases/ disorders as diverse as addiction, self-injurious behavior, pain, cancer, infl- mation, eating disorders, traumatic injury, pruritis, and movement disorders. These potential treatments involve both novel chemical entities and classic opioid antagonists with improved drug delivery systems. The contributions contained in Opioid Receptors and Antagonists: From Bench to Clinic represent the efforts from some of the leading international...

Neuroscience's inherent complexity and rapid growth mean that no one can keep abreast of all the changes across the field. We each bring a necessarily narrow perspective. Neurotherapeutics: Emerg- ing Strategies is an attempt to provide some diverse perspectives within the hunt for new drugs to treat central nervous system diseases. The book's premise is that the search for new drugs is based on an understanding ofboth clinical and basic sciences. Neurotherapeu- tics: Emerging Strategies begins with psychiatry and concludes with neurological disorders. Each chapter examines a disease,...

Leading experts critically summarize the state of knowledge concerning the molecular, anatomical, physiological, and behavioral aspects of NPY and its congeners. Each article provides a comprehensive and in-depth survey, an overview of the role of NPY in the discipline covered, a discussion of the likely future direction that the field will take, and an up-to-date bibliography.
Chapters include a treatment of the evolution of the PP family of genes, the structure of the NPY gene, and the distribution of NPY on the cardiovascular system, actions of NPY on the electrophysiological...

Expert researchers critically review and evaluate the most common and important neurotoxins used today in neuroscience research. Each informative chapter thoroughly describes the significant mechanisms of action of a neurotoxin, as well as fully discussing the limits on their use and their clinical applicability. Several clinically oriented chapters are significant for neurologists treating Parkinsonism, for psychiatrists treating drug abuse and neurodegenerative disorders, and for primary care physicians treating patients with appetite suppressants. Highly Selective Neurotoxins provides all...

Neurons in the nervous system organize into complex networks and their functions are precisely controlled. The most important means for neurons to communicate with each other is transmission through chemical synapses, where the release of neurotransmitters by the presynaptic nerve terminal of one neuron influences the function of a second neuron. Since the discovery of chemical neurotransmission by Otto Loewi in the 1920s, great progress has been made in our understanding of mol- ular mechanisms of neurotransmitter release. The last decade has seen an explosion of knowledge in this field. The...

The aim of this book is to bring together social scientists, cognitive scientists, psychologists, neuroscientists, neuropsychologists and others to promote a dialogue about the variety of processes involved in social cognition, as well as the relevance of mirroring neural systems to those processes. Social cognition is a broad discipline that encompasses many issues not yet adequately addressed by neurobiologists. Yet, it is a strong belief that framing these issues in terms of the neural basis of social cognition, especially within an evolutionary perspective, can be a very fruitful...

The striatum is the principal input structure of the basal ganglia. Numerically, the great majority of neurons in the striatum are spiny projection neurons, which produce the inhibitory output of the striatum to the globus pallidum and substantia nigra. The major glutamatergic afferents to the striatum from the cerebral cortex make monosynaptic contact with spiny projection neurons. The dopaminergic afferents from the substantia nigra also synapse directly on the spiny projection neurons. Thus, the spiny projection neurons play a crucial role in the input output operations of the striatum by...

Psychopharmacology may be defined as the study of the effects of drugs on behavior. As an established scientific discipline, this is a relatively new area of research. Despite its short history, however, psychopharmacology has achieved a considerable degree of sophistication in the variety of experi mental approaches that are currently employed. Consequently, the interpretation of data accumulated through the use of various experimental laboratory techniques has become increasingly difficult and complex. Numerous excelIent texts and review articles are available that serve to outline recent...

A distinguished international panel of authors define our current understanding of neuronal damage after ischemia and critically review the significant recent developments and progress in cerebrovascular accident (CVA) drug trials, both in animal models and in the clinical setting. These leading basic and fundamental authorities survey such important new drugs as calcium-influx inhibitors, free-radical scavenging drugs, glutamate and glycinergic antagonists, and immune suppressors. They also evaluate all the latest findings concerning calcium homeostasis, glutamate toxicity, gene activation,...