IDENTIFICATION OF THE NEURAL SYSTEMS SUBSERVING THE ACTIONS OF CLOZAPINE - CLUES FROM IMMEDIATE-EARLY GENE-EXPRESSION

Studies of the mechanisms of action of antipsychotic drugs have focused on delineating the sites of action of these drugs and the receptors through which these drugs act. A number of methods have been used to approach these problems. Expression of immediate-early genes, such as c-fos, permits the detection of individual neurons that are metabolically activated by a particular drug challenge and thus opens the way to examining both the specific sites of action of drugs and their receptor mechanisms. We now report on studies defining corticostriatal circuits and the receptors that subserve the actions of antipsychotic drugs, using immunohistochemical and immunoblot methods to reveal immediate-early gene expression.