Historically, from the days of Feldberg in the 1950's, physiologists, pharmacologists, neurobiologists, neurochemists and other scientists have considered that the demonstration of the release of a neurotransmitter, and an alteration of its metabolism, served to reflect the neuronal function played by that substance. This proposed conference, to be sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences, will present modern extensions of this historical perspective. It will provide noteworthy information on a series of remarkable findings that have arisen during the last decade, as well as on the burgeoning experimental observations that continuously emerge today. The conference on the neurochemical approaches and analysis of the brain of the conscious animal will make an exceedingly important contribution to the general fields of neuroscience and neurobiology. The reason for this viewpoint rests in the fact that a whole series of remarkable technical breakthroughs have occurred in several major scientific areas of endeavor. Today, in vivo analytical procedures are used at an ever-increasing rate to examine the actual on-line release, synthesis, metabolism and/or other activity on many endogenous factors in the brain, including neurotransmitters. To illustrate, an anatomically circumscribed site in the brain, in itself characterized by its chemical uniqueness, can be perfused or superfused by a physiological solution. As a result, a drug can be delivered in a controlled fashion to the site, and an endogenous factor can be collected from this tissue and identified by a quantitative assay. Alternatively, by the use of in vivo electrovoltammetry, the specific activity of a monoamine and certain of its metabolites can be delineated with a brain structure rich in content of the amine. Overall, the approaches that have yielded such extremely valuable information on the changes in brain chemistry that correlate with the physiological process, behavioral event, or a neuroendocrine response will constitute the major impact of this conference.
