The two Animal Models in Psychiatry volumes are loosely organized by subject. The first volume contains a number of chapters concerned with schizophrenia, psyc- ses, neuroleptic-induced tardive dyskinesias, and other d- orders that may involve dopamine, such as attention deficit disorder and mania. Also included is a chapter describing a behavioral model for activity-induced anorexia. The second volume deals with affective and anxiety disorders, but also includes chapters on subjects not easily classified as either psychotic, affective, or anxiety-related, such as aggression, mental...

In Vitro Neurochemical Techniques is one of three volumes that rep- sent an update of the original Volume 1 of Neuromefkods, General Neu- chemical Techniques The expansion to three volumes was necessitated by the rapidly increasing number of techniques being used by neuroscrentists and the general tendency of neuroscience research to become more multidisciplrnary and collaborative in recent years. The two companion volumes are concerned primarily with In Vwo Neurometkods in one case, and with Cell Neurobiology Techniques in the other case. Even with three volumes, the coverage of General...

The cutting-edge techniques detailed here include those that are particularly popular in multidisciplinary neuroscience research. There are readily reproducible methods for establishing neural cell cultures, measuring enzymes and their inhibitors, and using quantitative autoradiography to study monoamine uptake sites and receptors in the brain. Additional methods cover the use of flow cytometry to study developmental neurobiology, applications of magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) to human brain metabolism, and the study of drug metabolism. Together with its companion volumes, In Vivo...

we might seek alternative sources of donor tissues. Genetic en- neering, expansion of precursor cells, generation of immortalized cell lines, and transplantation between species are all under active investigation. Although significant difficulties remain for each of these alternatives, the problems appear soluble and relevant knowledge is expanding rapidly. As we enter the twenty-first century, the place of neural tra- plantation in experimental neuroscience is continuing to evolve. Rather than being a topic in its own right, neural transplantation increasingly serves as just another...

In this volume, we hope to cover the malor techniques that are presently being used to analyze the actions of drugs used in psyc- atry. The contributors of the chapters are active researchers who have considerable practical experience with the techniques they are describing, and the emphasis in the chapters is on three types of psychiatric drugs, namely antidepressants, antipsychotics, and anxiolytics. The first chapter, by Curry and Yu, discusses protein binding of psychotropic drugs, with special reference to equilibrium ana- sis as the method of assessment and to lipophilicity...

Lipids m the nervous system are major components of the m- branes. The presence of glycolipids in high concentrations is unique for the nervous system. Recent discoverres of the functronal and pathological importance of lipids such as diacylglycerols, polyphosphoinositides, prostaglandins, leukotrienes, docosahexaenoic acid, platelet activating factor, and gangliosides have markedly increased the number of publications on nervous system lipids. Many new methods have been developed. Thus, there IS a need for this volume that is dedicated to that methodo- gy. This volume places all of the...

to the Animal Models Volumes This and several other volumes in the Neuromethods series will describe a number of animal models of neuropsychiatric disorders. Because of increasing public concern over the ethical treatment of animals in research, we felt it incumbent upon us to include this general preface to these volumes in order to indicate why we think further - search using animals is necessary and why animal models of psychiatric disorders, in particular, are so important. We recognize that animals should only be used when suitable alternatives are not available. We think it self-e-...

The field of neurotrophic factors has witnessed exp- sive growth in the past decade. As is usual in scientific in- vation, this progress has been closely associated with methodological advances. The introduction of molecular b- logical techniques into the neurotrophic factor field led to the discovery of new families of neurotrophic growth f- tors and their receptors. Production of growth factors by recombinant technology played a crucial part. The example of nerve growth factor, the paradigmatic neurotrophic factor, illustrates this point. A decade ago investigators were forced to purify...

E. Neher and B. Sakman were the first to monitor the opening and closing of single ion channels and membranes by conductance measurements. In 1976, they used firepolished micropipets with a tip diameter of 3-5 pm to record currents from a small patch of the membranbe of sk- etal muscles, thereby decreasing background membrane noise. In order to reduce the dominant source of background noise-the leakage shunt under the pipet rim between m- the muscle membrane had to be treated brane and gla- enzymatically. Despite these early limitations, a new te- nique was born -the patch-clamp technique....