Drugs and the Neuroscience of Behavior: An Introduction to Psychopharmacology 2nd Edition

Book Preface

Drugs and the Neuroscience of Behavior: An Introduction to Psychopharmacology, second
edition, provides a broad coverage of the fundamental concepts and principles of
psychopharmacology. These include how drugs enter and travel through the body, the
various actions psychoactive drugs can have in the brain, and the many types of behavioral
and physiological effects brought about by the actions of drugs in the brain. These topics
are presented early in the book and show how they can help us to understand the use,
actions, and effects of different classes of drugs, including psychostimulants, depressants,
cannabis, psychedelics, and drugs used for treating mental disorders.

The first edition of the text came about from my years of teaching and studying
psychopharmacology; in particular, I was influenced by my research training, which
involved everything from bench-top molecular biology work to assessing behavior in lab
rats and mice. The current edition of the textbook continues to emphasize how basic
research findings apply to the effects we find in humans. In doing so, students not only
learn how drugs act on the nervous system to produce pharmacological effects, but they
also learn about the techniques used to study psychoactive drugs.

It’s been only a few years since the first edition was released, but the rapid advancement of
this field has made a revision to the book absolutely necessary. Here’s an example: vaping.
Nicotine vaping became popular soon after the release of the first edition and is now a
major addition to Chapter 7, “Nicotine and Caffeine.” This is one of many major new
topics added to the second edition, all of which I note later in this Preface.

Changes in the Second Edition
This second edition of Drugs and the Neuroscience of Behavior: An Introduction to
Psychopharmacology provides major changes throughout book, including the addition of
new topics and updated information on past topics.
Major new topics include coverage of:
Chapter 2: Epigenetics
Chapter 3: Optogenetics
Chapter 4: The role of pKa and pH in drug absorption
Chapter 5: Bulimia nervosa
Chapter 6: Sex differences in psychostimulant addiction
Chapter 7: E-cigarettes and vaping
Chapters 6–15: DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for dependence and mental disorders
Chapter 8: Kombucha and different types of beer
Chapter 11: Dabbing and vaping cannabis products
Chapter 12: Timothy Leary
Chapter 13: Gliotransmitters, treatments for fibromyalgia
Chapter 15: Pharmacological treatments for autism spectrum disorder
New findings for topics found in the first edition were provided on:
Chapter 5: The role of the amygdala in drug addiction
Chapter 6: Bath salts
Chapter 7: Tobacco smoke exposure and risk of Alzheimer’s disease
Chapter 8: Changes in glutamate receptor function during chronic alcohol use and
alcohol blackout
Chapter 11: The effectiveness of medical marijuana
Chapter 12: Effectiveness of ketamine for treating depression
Chapter 14: The association between cortisol levels and posttraumatic stress disorder
Here is a more detailed overview of what was added for the second edition.
Chapter 1: Certain safety index, clarifications about study variables, and clinical trial
phases.
Chapter 2: Clarification of information about genetics, new material about
neurogenetics and epigenetics, and more information about the autonomic nervous
system.
Chapter 3: An entire box devoted to optogenetics, and new information about
turnover, neuromodulation, Down syndrome, and conformational changes to
neurotransmitter receptors.
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Chapter 4: Significant content regarding pharmacokinetics, including equations that
consider a drug’s pKa and the pH levels of the physiological environment, Phase I
and II Biotransformation, the term liberation, and conjugation and conjugation
reaction. Further, new material on allosteric regulation, levodopa, and conditioned
tolerance.
Chapter 5: Consideration of the discordance between state and federal laws regarding
medical marijuana, updated material about DSM-5 (as do all subsequent chapters),
revised and improved material regarding James Olds and Otto Loewi, role of
amygdala in addiction, additional information about 12-step programs, bulimia
nervosa, and some helpful information for readers who may need assistance coping
with drug addiction.
Chapter 6: Updated information on bath salts, and other additions included sex
differences in psychostimulant addiction, information about use of cocaine for nasal
surgeries and severe nose bleeds, and updated statistics on psychostimulant drug use
(all subsequent chapter received updated use statistics).
Chapter 7: Substantially revised material on e-cigarette use and vaping, thirdhand
smoking, greater mortality rates among African Americans, tobacco flue curing,
menthol cigarettes, tobacco smoke exposure and risk of Alzheimer’s disease, why
some first-time smokers become chronic smokers while others do not, material on
how to quit smoking, differences in the success of smoking cessation therapies based
on racial and sex differences, pH of caffeine and degree of absorption, and a
characterization of adenosine.
Chapter 8: Descriptions of different alcoholic beverages, polymorphisms and alcohol
metabolism, changes in NMDA receptor function from chronic alcohol
consumption, updated statistics on binge drinking, different types of blackout,
hormesis, cancer risk from drinking, confabulation, and acamprosate.
Chapter 9: A note about 1,4-Butanediol being an industrial solvent.
Chapter 10: The dramatic increase in heroin use was noted, along with information
about desomorphine, CYP2D6 activity and metabolism of codeine, definition of
opioid overdose, an explanation for why buprenorphine can be prescribed from
doctor’s offices, and a description of morphine as a potential partial agonist.
Chapter 11: Updated information on descriptions of different forms of cannabis,
THC concentrations if different types of cannabis plants, dabbing, personal vaporizer
use of smoking cannabis, relaxed federal regulations on transportation of cannabis,
clarified information on THC and weight gain, risk of schizophrenia from cannabis
use, major additions to behavioral effects of cannabis use, adverse effects from
synthetic cannabis use, and new evidence about effectiveness of medical marijuana.
Chapter 12: New material, including possibility that Salem witch trials were caused
by ergot poisoning, NBOMe drugs, Timothy Leary, effects of chronic hallucinogen
use, use of hallucinogens in psychotherapy, multiple organ failure (regarding
MDMA), effects of phencyclidine at neuromuscular junctions, out-of-body
experience, and effects of dissociative anesthetics on memory.
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Chapter 13: New prevalence data on differences in depression between men and
women, greater prevalence of aggression in depressed men, predictors of suicide,
higher rates of depression in Alzheimer’s disease, role reserpine played in history of
psychopharmacology, levodopa and the film Awakenings, black box warnings for
antidepressants, sexual side effects, emotional blunting, fibromyalgia, issues
surrounding placebo effects in antidepressant studies, combining psychotherapy and
pharmacotherapy, role of serotonin neurotransmission in antidepressant effects, new
material on ketamine and scopolamine, use of diffusion tensor imaging in bipolar
disorder, and historical information on lithium.
In Chapter 14, more information about differences between anxiety and fear, a
description of how optogenetics was used to activate fear memories, associations
between cortisol levels and PTSD, clarification between sedative and hypnotic,
potential for addiction to benzodiazepines, gliotransmitters, endogenous
benzodiazepines, Z-drugs, and role of serotonin neurotransmission in effectiveness of
drugs for treating anxiety.
Chapter 15: Now has a description of benzodiazepine use for catatonic
schizophrenia, cognitive dysmetria, the long-abandoned theory of the
schizophrenogenic mother, the disputes between Laborit and Deniker, antiemetic
effects of antipsychotic drugs, antipsychotic depot injections, and the use of
antipsychotic drugs for treating autism