PROCEEDINGS OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF

ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR

A meeting of the Association was held on 15th and 16th December in the Psychology Depart-ment, Birkbeck College, London, by kind permission of Professor C. A. Mace. The President, Dr. K .Mellanby, C.B.E ., was in the chair.

Thursday, 15th DecemberTHE EFFECTS OF CHEMICALS AND DRUGS ON BEHAVIOUR

USING DRUGS TO STUDY ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR . A REVIEW. By HANNAH STEINBERG (London)

Research on the relations between drugs andanimal behaviour has much increased during thelast ten years : for example, a recent biblio-graphy (Caldwell, 1958) lists 2 animal studieswith chlorpromazine in 1953 and 44 in 1956 .Many new drugs which act on the nervous sys-tem have been introduced, and this has alsostimulated interest in older drugs like barbitur-ates ; and many kinds of animal and of behaviourhave been studied .

Most investigations can be roughly classifiedaccording to their predominant aim, and inpractice each is apt be to pursued by workerswith different backgrounds : either (i) behaviouris used to analyse the action of drugs, or (ii)drugs are used as tools to analyse behaviour .The two aims are of course complementary,since a better understanding of the mode ofaction of these drugs partly depends on a betterunderstanding of behaviour, and vice versa .(i) Drugs do not usually act exclusively on

any one kind of behaviour. But if several dosesof the same drug are used, it can sometimes beshown that one kind of behaviour is modified bya lower dose than some other kinds ; `profiles'can be plotted for each drug showing the dosesat which different kinds of behaviour becomesensitive to its effects, and in this way strikingquantitative differences between the patterns ofaction of different drugs can be demonstrated,*The preparation of this review and of the list of pub-lications was supported by research grant MY-3313from the National Institute of Mental Health, PublicHealth Service, U .S .A .

SOME PUBLICATIONS RELEVANT TO THE EFFECTS OF DRUGS ON ANIMAL BEHAVIOURBy HANNAH STEINBERG & CHRISTINE TINSON (London)

1 . SYMPOSIA AND BOOKS .Ann . N.Y. Acad. Sci . (1954) 59, 1-140 . Reserpine (Ser-

pasil) and other alkaloids of Rauwolfia Serpen-tina : chemistry, pharmacology, and clinicalapplications .

Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. (1955) . 61, 1-280 . Rcserpinc in thetreatment of neuro-psychiatric, neurological andrelated clinical problems .

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e .g. Janssen (in the Press). Systematic inform-ation of this sort is most easily obtained whenrelatively quick and simple tests of behaviour areused, as in `screening' new compounds, but themore information becomes available the moreit will help those who want to use drugs as toolsfor analysing more complex kinds of behaviourstep by step. (ii) Anaesthetics and curare havelong been found valuable for elucidating thephysiological bases of learning and memory,drugs like amphetamine and `tranquillizers'are being much used to study motivation andemotional behaviour in rats, cats and monkeys(see e .g. Miller & Barry, 1960), and there aremany other examples . Doses may again becrucial . Thus barbiturates-like alcohol-nor-mally depress most forms of activity, but some-times they stimulate it when given in small doses ;whether they do this in a particular case willdepend on the kind of activity, on the environ-ment and on the past experience of the animal .It is possible that there are optimal doses fordemonstrating effects of environment and ex-perience .

REFERENCESCaldwell, A . E . (1958). Psychopharnmca. Washington :

U.S . Dept . Health, Education & Welfare .Janssen, P . Pharmacology of 8 .1625, including a review

of methods of testing for the action of drugs on thenervous sytem . In Syngnosiaai on R . 1625, Haloperi-del. (in the Press) .

Miller, N . E . & Barry, H. (1960) . Motivational effects ofdrugs . Psycho-pharmacolugiu, 1, 169-199 .

Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. (1956), 64, 463-731 . Experimentalmethods for the evaluation of drugs in variousdisease states ; part 5, 630-731 . Disorders of thecentral nervous system .

Ann. N . Y . Acad. Sci. (1956), 65, 247-356 . Techniques forthe study of behavioral effects of drugs .

Ann: N.Y. Acad . Sci. (1957) . 66, 417-840. The pharma-cology of psychotomimetic and psychotherapeuticdrugs .