Behavioral Toxicology

Neurobehavioral Techniques to Assess the Effects of Chemicals on the Nervous System

“…These tests involve various conditioned reflexes, such as those requiring shock or food motivation and induction processes oflearning and acquisition. Although much ofthe terminology of the Pavlovian-oriented researchers differs from that of the more behaviorist framework of the West, there is considerable convergence in the two approaches (12). Where they may differ is in how a behavioraIIy toxic effect is interpreted and later translated into regulations for the environment.…”

“…In the US, it was 1969 before Weiss & Laties (10) included a section on behavioral toxicology in their chapter on behavioral pharmacology in the Annual Review of Pharmacology. Since that time, behavioral toxicology has been the subject of numerous books, symposia, reviews, and book chapters in Western countries (1, [3][4][5][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20].…”

The contributions of B. F. Skinner to the interdisciplinary science of behavioural pharmacology

“…Blough, 1957) and for analysing the toxicological effects on behaviour of pollutants and other environmental agents (e.g. Evans & Weiss, 1978), as well as in many other areas.…”

Behavioral assessment of visual toxicity.

“…Finally, further discussion of these issues can be found in reviews of general principles in behavioral toxicology (9,39). …”

“…Although visual science currently is a lively and sophisticated field, the toxicologist will find neither a benchmark test for vision nor any substantial body of research on visual toxicology. Therefore, this paper takes a wide-angle view of the various behavioral methods that have been employed in animal experiments and summarizes their advantages and disadvantages for the * (9). October 1978 Operant Reinforcement Schedules A quite different approach, employing operant reinforcement schedules in assessing learned behavior (10), has examined drug effects upon discriminative behavior.…”