ABSTRACT
The term ‘behavioural pharmacology’ encompasses two rather different approaches used in neuropharmacology. The first approach is the use of a behavioural change as a marker of 5–hydroxytryptamine (5–HT) function. Use of this approach allows studies to be made of the ways that psychoactive compounds alter a particular response and could thus be altering the function of the neurotransmitter more generally. In this regard therefore the behaviour is essentially a bioassay system and the fact that a drug used for a particular clinical condition alters the response should never be taken to imply that the behaviour is a model of the clinical condition. However the results can be used to suggest that the drug might be producing a similar change in 5–HT function when given clinically and thus at least allow speculation that this change is involved in the therapeutic mechanism of action. The second approach involves study of physiological and psychological responses of experimental animals and the assessment, by the use of specific drugs, of the involvement of a specific neurotransmitter of neurotransmitter receptor sub–types in these responses.
