Neuropharmacology may be a branch of study which deals with drugs that affect the systema nervosum. It is focused on the development of compounds which may be of benefit to individuals who suffer from neurological or psychiatric illness.
Therefore, this field requires an in-depth knowledge of how the systema nervosum functions also because the way during which each drug acts upon neural circuits and alters cellular behavior, and eventually the organism’s behavior.
Neuropharmacology itself came into existence only 5 decades ago, before which there have been only four drugs available for nerve disorders: morphine, caffeine, laughing gas, and aspirin. In the next 50 years, a replacement set of medicine like antihistamines, barbiturates, and opioid analogs have emerged.
With modern insights into the molecular basis of action of the many drugs, and therefore the availability of current research methods, work is ongoing to know how the brain works at molecular and cellular levels. This includes drug delivery to the brain and understanding the role of genetic variation in drug effects between individual patients to realize personalized treatment of systema nervosum illness.