Neuropharmacology

Definition

“Neuropharmacology” is the subdiscipline of pharmacology devoted to the study of the action of drugs on the nervous system. This includes the effects of therapeutic drugs as well as recreational drugs and toxins. Neuropharmacology is distinct from related subjects, such as neurochemistry, neurophysiology and neuroanatomy, in that the emphasis is on drug action. Whereas the neurochemist and the neurophysiologist study the same cellular machinery of the nervous system as the neuropharmacologist, the latter does so with the chemical structure of drugs and how it affects that machinery, in mind. In this regard, neuropharmacology interacts with medicinal chemistry in order to understand how various molecular structures affect receptors and other drug targets within the cells of the nervous system. No matter how diverse different branches of pharmacology may be, what pharmacologists, including neuropharmacologists, have in common is the desire to understand how exogenous chemical...