Drugs and Behavior: An Introduction to Behavioral Pharmacology (6th Edition)

For undergraduate courses in Drugs and Behavior Psychopharmacology, as well as graduate survey courses in Psychopharmacology.

 

This text gives an up-to-date description of the field of Behavioral Pharmacology. It starts by describing basic pharmacological concepts of drug administration and pharmacokinetics, research methodology including clinical trials, tolerance and withdrawal, drug conditioning, addiction processes, and neuroscience of drug action. Each chapter, thereafter, applies these concepts to different classes of both recreational and therapeutic drugs. Each chapter includes a section on the history of the drug class that places the drug in its historical and social context. It is written to be understandable to students without a background in Pharmacology or Neuroscience or Psychology.

Designed for students from diverse backgrounds, this highly accessible text provides students with a thorough background in the field of behavioral pharmacology and prepares them to analyze drug information from a variety of sources. Written in a clear and sensible manner, it not only describes the effects of drugs on behavior, but also the various ways that behavior principles facilitate an understanding of both the actions of drugs and the way people use them. Each chapter provides comparable information on many classes of both drugs of abuse and psychotherapeutic drugs, including their neurophysiological mechanism of action, their effects on behavior, and a discussion of the historical and social context in which the drug is used.