This volume is intended to provide students and investigators of brain-be havior relationships with an understanding of the current concepts of the role of catecholamines in the regulation of behavior. Catecholamines are now believed to be modulators or transmitters in systems regulating a number of important aspects of behavioral function. The present intense interest in catecholamines is reflected by the large number of scientific reports dealing with these compounds. Even those reports which are rele vant to behavior are staggering in number. The contributors to this book have drawn on the salient literature, as well as on their own work, with a view toward clarifying relationships between the basic neurobiology of cate cholaminergic neural systems and normal and abnormal behavioral func tion. Current work in this field is heavily dependent on the use of psychotropic drugs to produce model behavioral states, or as biological probes. As a result psychopharmacological studies are generously represented. I n the last chapter of Volume 2 the editor has attempted to further relate and develop the material in the two volumes from the con ceptual and theoretical standpoint. New York AJF Contributors to Volume 2 Wagner H. Bridger, Department oj Psychiatry, Albert Einstein College oj Medicine, Bronx, New York Thomas R. Bozewicz, Department oj Psychiatry, Albert Einstein College oj Medicine, Bronx, New York Doris H. C1ouet, Testing and Research Laboratory, New York State Drug Abuse Control Commission, Brooklyn, New York John M.

The editor of these volumes has asked me to contribute a brief foreword. When I accepted this honor I suddenly became aware of the enormous progress that has taken place in this field in the 50 years since I began as a medical student, in a humble way, to take interest in the catecholamine system. At about that time some evidence was forthcoming to the effect that catecholamines were an important factor in eliciting emotional reactions, thus secondarily influencing behavior. The great physiologist Walter B. Cannon showed in his classic experiments that when a cat was exposed to a dog it responded not only with overt signs of aversion and dislike, but also with an increased flow of adrenaline from its adrenals. The relationships between catecholamines and behavior have since then become the subject of intense research by physiologists, pharmacologists, and psychologists. Infu sion of adrenaline in man was shown to provoke a typical pattern of emo tional and behavioral changes. The development of more convenient methods for the measurement of catecholamines in blood and urine led to important new findings. A close association between emotional stress and catecholamine release could be es tablished. This was further extended to psychiatric disorders in which characteristic disturbances in catecholamine release patterns were described."