British Association for Psychopharmacology Summer Meeting

Abstract

The 2006 British Association for Psychopharmacology Summer Meeting was held in Oxford, UK. The British Association for Psychopharmacology is now one of the largest national psychopharmacology associations in the world with over 1000 members, and 550 national and international delegates attended the summer meeting. This meeting provides an annual forum for scientists and clinical investigators from academia and the pharmaceutical industry to share information on many aspects of the psychopharmacology of psychiatric illness. In total, 292 abstracts were accepted for presentation at the meeting. These were divided into 57 oral and 235 poster presentations. Research areas covered all aspects of psychopharmacology from basic research to pharmaceutical development and clinical application. This report highlights selected presentations from the meeting, focusing on rapid tryptophan depletion, which is a dietary manipulation that is used to study central serotonin function and putative animal models of depression and schizophrenia.

Keywords::

• schizophrenia
• depression
• tryptophan depletion
• parental deprivation