Coccaro E F, Kavoussi R J
Department of Psychiatry, Medical College of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 19129.
Clin Chem. 1994 Feb;40(2):319-27.
Psychopharmacologic challenge procedures offer many useful features for biological psychiatry research. First, challenge procedures acutely stimulate neurotransmitter and (or) hormonal systems in the brain and offer the chance to assess the function, and (or) reserve, of the brain neurotransmitter/hormone system of relevance. Second, these paradigms often offer functional information about specific areas of the brain (e.g., limbic-hypothalamus). Regardless of these advantages, the power of these procedures is limited to the specificity of the agent and of the functional anatomy of the "circuit" that leads to the outcome measure, which, in turn, is linked to the stimulation by the acute pharmacologic challenge. We describe here the development of the psychopharmacologic challenge methodology and the strengths and weaknesses of this approach. Finally, the application of this paradigm in the study of various neuropsychiatric disorders will be reviewed and critiqued.
精神药理学激发程序为生物精神病学研究提供了许多有用的特性。首先，激发程序能急性刺激大脑中的神经递质和（或）激素系统，并提供评估相关大脑神经递质/激素系统功能和（或）储备的机会。其次，这些范例通常能提供有关大脑特定区域（如边缘下丘脑）的功能信息。尽管有这些优点，但这些程序的效力仅限于药物的特异性以及导致结果测量的“回路”的功能解剖学特异性，而这又与急性药理学激发的刺激相关。我们在此描述精神药理学激发方法的发展以及该方法的优缺点。最后，将对该范例在各种神经精神疾病研究中的应用进行综述和评判。
