Drug Effects in Animal Classification of Psychotropic Drugs by Means of Animal EEG and Sleep Studies Workshop, Boca Raton, Fla., May 1992. Special Topic Issue: Neuropsychobiology 1993, Vol. 28, No. 3

This publication derives from a special workshop which took place under the auspices of the International pharmaco-EEG Group. As the first symposium dedicated to this area of research, the purpose was to provide an overview of methods used to characterize and/or classify drugs with the aim of predicting clinical indications. Different approaches were chosen for the study of drug effects on the electrical brain activity of different animals. Studies of the effects of drugs on the spectral content of the EEG, as well as of the changes in sleep architecture under drugs, paralleled those in humans and led to a better understanding of the mode of action of a drug and thus to a better prediction of the clinical applicabilities. Such information is important, not only for the development of experimental paradigms with which to probe the functional relevance of centrally acting drugs, but also in order to help realize the clinical potential of newly developed drugs.