Behavioral pharmacology: recent developments and new trends

Pharmacology has traditionally focused on and found order in the study of drug effects on relatively isolated pieces of tissue or organ systems. Research in behavioral pharmacology has demonstrated that comparable order also exists when drugs are examined at the level of integrated behavior. Substantial progress has been made in delineating specific behavioral and environmental determinants of drug action that are objective, quantifiable and reproducible. These findings, together with those from related areas of research, promise to yield significant information about environmental and neurochemical determinants of behavior and the behavioral effects of drugs.