Landmarks in Cerebral Neurochemistry

Abstract

The chemistry of the brain is one of the newer subdisciplines of neuroscience, having become formalized with the organization of national and international groups such as the International Society of Neurochemistry in 1965. Derived from the surge of interest in the histochemistry and cytochemistry of neurons, neurochemistry is closely related to neuropharmacology and psychoneuropharmacology. Its rapid coming of age marked the emergence of an immensely promising field of research and knowledge in areas as diverse as the biological basis of mental health and the nerve impulse. One channel of basic research on chemical substances, later found to have psychotropic properties (and high interest to the pharmaceutical industry), brought about a therapeutic “revolution” that decimated the mental hospital populations of the midtwentieth century (see Swazey,1974). The recognition that the chemistry of the brain, seen as a separate organ relatively isolated from the other parts of the body, is the biological basis of mental health was the key to a vast research domain that extends from human behavior to the level of very specific ionic processes. And because biologic viability depends on energy supply and demand, the dynamics of cerebral vascularity have been of utmost importance in understanding those processes.

One thing about the cerebral circulation that has been agreed upon from the start is that it is unique in all essential respects, beginning with the morphological.

(Schmidt, 1950, p. 4)