Brain cell acquisition and neurotropic drugs with special reference to functional teratogenesis

Abstract

This chapter describes brain cell acquisition and neurotropic drugs with special reference to functional teratogenesis. The chapter also talks about the effects of psychotropic drugs on cell acquisition in the rat brain, but it must be emphasized that effects on cell differentiation may be of no less importance because normal brain development depends on the formation and differentiation of neural cells in an interrelated fashion. Much evidence indicates that substances which act as neurotransmitters in the developed brain may also function as neurohumoural agents, involved in the regulation both of the early phases of embryogenesis and of the subsequent stages of development in the nervous system. Persistent changes in higher nervous function are often seen in experimental animals after exposure to neurotropic drugs during the period of rapid brain development. The chapter also examines the possibility that such abnormalities have a structural basis and may be because of drug-induced perturbations of cell acquisition in the brain.