Neurotransmitter Balances Regulating Behavior

Editor(s): Edward F. Domino, John M. Davis Format: Hard cover ISBN-13: 9780916182007 Pages: 537 Publication date: 1975-07-01 Price: $99.99

The origin of this book was a Study Group session of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) at its annual meeting in San Diego, December 4 to 7, 1973. The ACNP Program Committee for that year approved a session on Neurotransmitters and Autocoid Balances Regulating Behavior. At the time, only abstracts were requested of the participants and these were subsequently published in Psychopharmacology Bulletin, volume 10, number 3, July, 1974 as part of the Abridged Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the ACNP. However, the meeting generated sufficient enthusiasm among the participants that the majority decided to prepare more detailed manuscripts covering their verbal material for this volume. Inasmuch as the ambitious plan to cover both neurotransmitter and autocoid balances was not achieved, the autocoids were dropped and the result is the present title. Two major sessions were held. The first dealt with chemical balances in the brain systems of reward, and the second with neurotransmitter balances in mental illness. Although a few manuscripts were submitted in early 1974, the majority were completed by mid-1975. In a real sense most of the papers record the most recent observations and concepts.

Many of us have become so preoccupied with identifying the behavioral role of a single putative neurotransmitter that we have forgotten the concepts of earlier researchers, such as Hess, who emphasized the antagonistic roles of the ergotropic and tropotropic systems. The trend for looking for complex interactions among neurotransmitters is again becoming more popular. Surely, it will lead to a better understanding of the brain, its chemical mechanisms — and its function — behavior.
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