What Is Psychopharmacology?

We think of sleep as the period in which we rest for several hours either during the day or usually at night. This is when the body is most at rest. However, there is so much more to sleep then we could even imagine. Sleep consists of two main portions but several stages. Slow-wave sleep has a period in which we experience EEG activity and is focused mainly during the first half of our sleep, usually when we do not dream. It is supposed to be a time in which we allow our brain to rest, but not necessarily our body. Then there is a period called rapid eye movement sleep or REM sleep. Your eyes move rapidly in a number of directions only during this share of sleep, hence the name. During this time of sleep one would dream even if you don 't remember doing so. It becomes harder to wake one front this sleep because it is a deeper stage and occurs during the

However, there are more serious reasons to use drugs and by drugs I mean proscribed medication. Psychopharmacology is the study of the use of drugs to treat patients with nervous system disorders and behavioral problems. Pharmacokinetics is the processes in which drugs enter the body, are distributed and the process they are evacuated from the body. Drugs cannot remain in the body forever; they are broken down through enzymatic deactivation and secreted through the kidneys.

Now there are several different methods in which you can administrate these specific medications. Administration of drugs directly to the brain is called intracerebral administration and is the quickest but not the easiest route. Then there is intracerebroventricular administration into the cerebral ventricles. A more common way to give someone a drug is by IV as they would in a hospital setting because this goes directly into the vein. Two slower ways to get the effects of a drug are to take them orally or by inhaling