INTEGRATION OF MOLECULAR BIOLOGICAL TECHNIQUES AND BEHAVIORAL PHARMACOLOGY

The rapidly advancing technology in the area of molecular neuroscience has greatly expanded the tools available to behavioural pharmacologis ts for investigating the molecular bases underlying the interrelation of pharmacological agents and behaviour, Strategies such as gene targe ted knockout mutations, expression of an exogenous transgene, as well as the disruption of the cellular expression of genes with antisense o ligonucleotides, are being successfully used to study normal and impai red behavioural function. Advantages of these genetic methods include the ability to manipulate systems for which selective pharmacological ligands do not exist, and the opportunity to study the interaction bet ween genotype and environment without having to rely on spontaneously occurring mutants or selective breeding programmes. By targeting parti cular genes, questions can be asked about how genes control neuronal f unction and how manipulations of these genes affect behaviour, In part icular, these strategies have been applied to studies of the molecular bases for disrupted behaviours, the behavioural actions of psychoacti ve drugs, and models of neuropsychiatric and neuropathological disorde rs, These emerging molecular biological techniques complement traditio nal pharmacological analysis to provide a very powerful approach with which to study the molecular correlates of behavioural pharmacology.