Experimental Models in Serotonin Transporter Research

The serotonin transporter is a key brain protein that modulates the reuptake of the neurotransmitter serotonin from synaptic spaces back into the presynaptic neuron. This control over neuronal signalling makes it a prime area of neuroscientific study. In this book an international team of top experts introduce and explicate the role of serotonin and the serotonin transporter in both human and animal brains. They demonstrate the relevance of the transporter and indeed the serotonergic system to substrates of neuropsychiatric disorders, and explain how this knowledge is translated into valid animal models that will help foster new discoveries in human neurobiology. Writing for graduate students and academic researchers, they provide a comprehensive coverage of a wide spectrum of data from animal experimentation to clinical psychiatry, creating the only book exclusively dedicated to this exciting new avenue of brain research.

Allan V. Kalueff is Assistant Professor of physiology in the Department of physiology and Biophysics at the Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington DC, USA. His research has been recognized with numerous prestigious scientific awards, and has focused on the role of the serotonin transporter as a contributor to neuropsychiatric disorders in various animal models. Justin L. Laporte worked at the National Institute of Mental Health (Bethesda, USA) and employed behavioral pharmacology and molecular genetics approaches to elucidate the pathogenetic mechanisms of psychiatric disorders with a specific focus on the role of the serotonin transporter.