Neuropsychopharmacology: Reflections on 40 Volumes

Abstract

This issue completes volume 40 of Neuropsychopharmacology (NPP), with the first issue published in December, 1987. This should be distinguished from our 40th anniversary; for the first several years, issues were thin, months were skipped, and multiple volumes were published per year. To commemorate this accomplishment, the editor-in-chief (Dr Carlezon) asked me as in-coming ACNP President to write a brief overview of my views on the developments in our field over this time period, using highly cited articles published in NPP as a guide.Early on, two articles highlight themes that continue today. One is the development of animal models for psychiatric illnesses. Markou and Koob (1991) developed an animal model of the depression or anhedonia that accompanies cocaine withdrawal, with the drug being self-administered. The use of intracranial-self stimulation (ICSS) thresholds revealed them to be elevated during cocaine withdrawal, with this being interpreted as an 'anhedonic' state due to a desensitization of the reward pathways mediating ICSS reward. The establishment of this model enabled studies to try to understand the neurochemical mechanisms underlying a specific aspect of cocaine withdrawal, with this search continuing to the present.This article was ahead of its time by focusing on a component of the withdrawal process rather than withdrawal per se. Presently, much attention is focused on specific behavioral components of our psychiatric syndromes rather than the complete illness, and this is so both clinically and pre-clinically. This makes sense because our diagnostic schema have no bases in biology and

Fundamental and clinical neuropharmacology, a terra incognita with constantly expanding frontiers

“…The ambition of this recent discipline is to study the modes of action of psychotropic molecules so as to glean knowledge that will subsequently guide preclinical and clinical studies centered on more specific and more effective molecules (and with fewer side effects). The discipline also aims to bring together the work of clinicians and fundamental researchers in a multidisciplinary translational approach, from psychiatry to neurology and neuroscience [11]. Linking up complementary disciplines should lead to the emergence of new approaches and new concepts.…”