Lecture 6: Methods in Neuropharm Flashcards
Describe the advantages of using animal subjects over human participants in neurobiological research.
Describe how researchers evaluate and optimize behavioral tests in non-human animals with respect to face, predictive, and construct validity.
Identify and describe animal behavior tests commonly used to evaluate learning and memory; analgesia; anxiety- and depression-like behavior; and the abuse liability of drugs.
Describe how technological advances in bioinformatics, such as computer vision, can be utilized to describe behavioral signatures of drug effects.
Describe how stereotaxic surgery can be used in combination with a brain atlas to accurately target brain structures using a three-dimensional coordinate system.
Explain how neural activity can be monitored in awake, behaving animals. Compare and contrast neurochemical techniques, such as micro dialysis and in vivo voltammetry with electrophysiological techniques.
Describe the similarities and differences between radiolabeling assays and techniques that use immunocytochemistry (ICC). Provide examples of how these techniques are typically used in neuropharmacology research.
Identify and describe various tools used for detecting gene expression and transcription levels, including in situ hybridization (ISH), DNA microarrays, and RNA sequencing (RNA-seq).
Describe the different brain imaging technologies, with particular emphasis on the relative advantages and disadvantages of each, with respect to their utility in neuropharmacology.
Identify different genetic engineering technologies, including transgenic, knockout and knock in techniques.
Identify the advantages and disadvantages of electroencephalogram (EEG) technology relative to other techniques.
Describe how optogenetic and DREADD technology are useful for psychopharmacology research.
Explain how CRISPR technology has improved upon existing gene-editing techniques
identify ethical issues associated with CRISPR’s potential use in humans.
What are behavioral pharmacology measures are crucial for?
Understanding the neurochemical basis of behavior and drug-induced changes in that behavior
Developing animal models of psychiatric disorders
Screening newly designed drugs in preclinical pharmaceutical settings
What can results from controlled animal studies do?
validate correlational relationships.
How is animal testing protected as an important part of drug development and evaluation?
Strict animal care guidelines have been developed to ensure proper treatment of subjects.
What are some varieties of behaviors in animals evaluated by psychopharmacologists?
Simple observation of behaviors such as tremors, salivation, catalepsy
Measures of motor activity: identify drugs that produce sleep or sedation, or stimulate activity
What is operant conditioning?
animal learns a response to obtain rewards
Animal testing needs to be valid and reliable to produce useful information so what are some advantages?
Rigorous control of living conditions, food, etc., is possible.
Histories and genetic backgrounds are well known.
With human subjects, many research methods would be unethical.
Brains and behaviors of humans and nonhuman mammals are similar enough to allow generalization across species.
An optimal animal behavioral test should?
Have predictive validity
Be specific for the class of drug being screened
Be sensitive to a normal therapeutic range of dose and show a dose–response relationship
Demonstrate the same rank order of potency in animal tests as the order of potency of the therapeutic action of the drug
Have high reliability (the same results will be recorded each time the test is used)
What are limitations of animal tests?
Many diagnostic symptoms, such as thoughts of suicide or feelings of guilt, can’t be easily translated to animal behavior;
Most psychiatric disorders are highly complex in symptomatology but, most animal testing is forced to evaluate only one or a few behavioral symptoms;
There are multiple animal models for the same disorder with little in common;
There is insufficient information on the genetic or molecular basis of most disorders of the CNS
What are animal tests with high face validity?
tests closely resemble those used on humans (e.g., blood pressure).
What are animal tests with predictive validity?
drug effects observed in laboratory tests closely parallel or predict the clinical effect.
What are animal tests with construct validity?
extent to which the animal measurement tool actually measures the characteristic being investigated.
