Psychopharmacology (psychoactive drugs) 1. Name ways to get a drug into your system (sources of drug administration) 2. Rank those sources based on how fast they reach blood & thus the brain 3. List the factors that determine the effect of a drug on an individual. (In other words, what makes a psychoactive drug be more effective in one person than another) Group activity
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Psychopharmacology (psychoactive drugs) 1.Name ways to get a drug into your system (sources of drug administration) 2.Rank those sources based on how fast.
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Psychopharmacology(psychoactive drugs)
1. Name ways to get a drug into your system (sources of drug administration)
2. Rank those sources based on how fast they reach blood & thus the brain
3. List the factors that determine the effect of a drug on an individual. (In other words, what makes a psychoactive drug be more effective in one person than another)
Group activity
Outline
• Pharmacokinetics– Dose-response curve
• Pharmacodynamics– Drugs vs. NTs– Agonists vs. Antagonists– Receptor types
• Tolerance
• Specific Neurotransmitter Systems (& drugs that affect them)
• Whatever the body does to the drug
• how drugs are– absorbed, – distributed within the
body, – metabolized, and– excreted.
• Whatever the drug does to the body
• Main effect: increasing or decreasing the effect of neurotransmitter X
• Distribution: – Lipids (fats) vs. non-lipids (proteins, ionized molecules)
• Metabolization: liver• Excretion: kidneys
– Half-life: time it takes to eliminate half the drug from the bloodstream. It is used to determine inter-dose interval
Ways to administer a drug (& time to reach blood)
Dose-response curve: Effect of a drug as a function of the amount of the drug administered.
Therapeutic index: The ratio between the dose that produces the desired effect in 50% of the animals and the dose that produces toxic effects in 50% of the animals.
Pharmacodynamics
• A drug can do only two things, either: – Increase the effect of neurotransmitter X (agonist)– Decrease the effect of neurotransmitter X (antagonist)
Thus, in order to understand the action of a ‘drug X’, we need to understand the neurochemical system it interacts with.
In other words, we need to understand how Neurotransmitter X - is produced & released from the pre-synaptic neuron - acts on the receptors of the post-synaptic neuron- is removed from the synaptic cleft