Neurochemistry is the study of chemicals, including neurotransmitters and other molecules such as psychopharmaceuticals and neuropeptides, that control and influence the physiology of the nervous system.
[1] The first large leap forward in the study of neurochemistry came from Johann Ludwig Wilhelm Thudichum, who is one of the pioneers in the field of "brain chemistry."
[3] Back in the 1930s, neurochemistry was mostly referred to as "brain chemistry" and was mostly devoted to finding different chemical species without directly proposing their specific roles and functions in the nervous system.
The first biochemical pathology test for any brain disease can be attributed to Vito Maria Buscaino (1887-1978), a neuropsychiatrist who studied schizophrenia.
He found that treating her patients' urine who had schizophrenia, extrapyramidal disorders, or amentia, with 5% silver nitrate produced a black precipitate linked with an abnormal level of amines.
[4] The founding of neurochemistry as a discipline traces its origins to a series of "International Neurochemical Symposia", of which the first symposium volume published in 1954 was titled Biochemistry of the Developing Nervous System.
The neuropeptide oxytocin, synthesized in magnocellular neurosecretory cells, plays an important role in maternal behavior and sexual reproduction, particularly before and after birth.
It is involved in the letdown reflex when mothers breastfeed, uterine contractions, and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis where oxytocin inhibits the release of cortisol and adrenocorticotropic hormone.
[6][7][8][9] Glutamate, which is the most abundant neurotransmitter, is an excitatory neurochemical, meaning that its release in the synaptic cleft causes the firing of an action potential.
Dopamine has many roles in the brain including cognition, sleep, mood, milk production, movement, motivation, and reward.