Behavioural pharmacology of d-amphetamine: some metabolic and pharmacological considerations

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter describes the behavioral pharmacology of d -amphetamine. Food deprivation and amphetamine are both known to increase behavioral arousal in the rat. Amphetamine is generally believed to induce psychomotor excitation by increasing the synaptic release of catecholamines, and by blocking their reuptake from the synapse. The importance of this factor in the potentiation of amphetamine stimulation after chronic reserpine treatment has been evaluated. Groups of rats given chronic reserpine treatment showed significantly increased spontaneous locomotor activity, and an enhanced response to d -amphetamine as compared with controls. It is noteworthy, that the chronic reserpine treatment produced variable effects on final body weight, and the increased spontaneous activity, and the enhanced responsiveness to amphetamine were observed only in those individual animals which suffered marked weight loss. The food intake of the control group was restricted so that it was similar to the ad libitum intake of the rats treated with reserpine. In this case, where both the saline and the reserpine-treated groups suffered similar weight losses over 10 days, the chronic reserpine group was in no sense more responsive to amphetamine than were the controls.