Foundational Neuroscience

Foundational Neuroscience
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Foundational Neuroscience
Neuroscience refers to the scientific study of the nervous system. Pharmacology is the study of drugs' action from a broader perspective, involving numerous types of chemicals and medicines that affect the body functioning(Yeung et al., 2018). Pharmacologists study how drugs work in the body and use the knowledge to examine how the body functions. They discover various chemicals used to treat multiple underlying disorders(Camprodon & Roffman, 2016). Historically, pharmacologists and neuroscientists have collaborated to develop human models to examine drug receptors (Yeung et al., 2018). This paper aims to evaluate foundational neuroscience based on four questions briefly.
1 Agonist-to-antagonist spectrum of action of psychopharmacologic agents, including how partial and inverse agonist functionality may impact the efficacy of psychopharmacologic treatments.
Agonist and antagonist are critical players in pharmacology. Agonist refers to a substance that binds to the neurotransmitter and activates a receptor to produce a biological response (Berg & Clarke, 2018). An antagonist is a substance that blocks the action of the agonist. It binds to the receptor and stops the receptor from producing an intended response (Azhagiya Singam et al., 2019). These two agents act in opposite directions. For instance, an action produced by agonist is opposed by antagonist. The agonist spectrum has four different classifications: fullagonist, partial agonist, antagonist, and inverse agonist.
The agonist opens the channel and frequency allowed by the binding site. In contrast, the antagonist that lies at the centre of the spectrum retains its resting position with the channel's infrequent opening(Berg & Clarke, 2018). The inverse agonist closes and inactivates the ion channel. For ideal psychopharmacological treatments, a balanced ion flow and signal transduction that is neither too cold nor too hot is required(Azhagiya Singam et al., 2019). Such an ideal state depends on a clinical case and a balance between partial and inverse agonist functionality.
2 Actions of g couple proteins versus ion gated channels.
G couple Proteins are proteins that bind energy molecules (Alexander et al., 2017). Their function is to activate intracellular action by signalling pathways and modulate ion gated channels (Alexander et al., 2017). In contrast, ion gated channels are transmembrane proteins that regulate ion movements across the cell membrane (Duncan et al., 2017). The similarity is that neurotransmitters trigger both g proteins and ion gated channels. They both begin with a different messenger that binds to a specific receptor that activates different downstream chemical messenger (Alexander et al., 2017). Additionally, both g proteins and ion channels signal transduction.
3 How the role of epigenetics may contribute to pharmacologic action
Epigenetics is the study of gene expression changes that do not involve changes to the existing DNA sequence(Feinberg, 2018). Gene expression refers to the frequency at which proteins are developed from the instructions within a person’s genes. Where...