Pharmacology of MDMA- and Amphetamine-Like New Psychoactive Substances

New psychoactive substances (NPS) with amphetamine-, aminoindan-, and benzofuran basic chemical structures have recently emerged for recreational drug use. Detailed information about their psychotropic effects and health risks is often limited. At the same time, it emerged that the pharmacological profiles of these NPS resemble those of amphetamine or 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA). Amphetamine-like NPS induce psychostimulation and euphoria mediated predominantly by norepinephrine (NE) and dopamine (DA) transporter (NET and DAT) inhibition and transporter-mediated release of NE and DA, thus showing a more catecholamine-selective profile. MDMA-like NPS frequently induce well-being, empathy, and prosocial effects and have only moderate psychostimulant properties. These MDMA-like substances primarily act by inhibiting the serotonin (5-HT) transporter (SERT) and NET, also inducing 5-HT and NE release. Monoamine receptor interactions vary considerably among amphetamine- and MDMA-like NPS. Clinically, amphetamine- and MDMA-like NPS can induce sympathomimetic toxicity. The aim of this chapter is to review the state of knowledge regarding these substances with a focus on the description of the in vitro pharmacology of selected amphetamine- and MDMA-like NPS. In addition, it is aimed to provide links between pharmacological profiles and in vivo effects and toxicity, which leads to the conclusion that abuse liability for amphetamine-like NPS may be higher than for MDMA-like NPS, but that the risk for developing the life-threatening serotonin syndrome may be increased for MDMA-like NPS

Methods for Animal Brain Mapping

Measurements of brain electrical activity in animals are essential for the validation of the pharmaco-effect of drugs. The way to evaluate these recordings should be comparable to that of EEG in humans. Methods that visualize the results of the measured EEG recording include brain mapping in two-dimensional or three-dimensional space. The most commonly used methods of interpolation techniques in humans are spherical splines and 3D splines. We measured nine brains of Wistar rats and compared them with a brain model from the atlas (Brain Atlas Reconstructor, BAR). We validated the brain model of Wistar rat for future use. We implemented a module in MATLAB 2015a for brain mapping, specifically, we implemented algorithms for spherical and 3D spline mapping. The root mean square error of the spherical spline method is 0.5943 in the case of testing signal and 0.6291/0.6388 in the case of real data estimation. The root mean square error of the 3D spline method is 0.4334 in the case of testing signal and 0.0849/0.0768 in the case of real data estimation. Our results show that the 3D spline method with the projection on sphere gives significantly better 3D potential map than spherical splines