Description
Discussion: Foundational Neuroscience
As a psychiatric and mental health nurse practitioner, it is essential for you to have a strong background in foundational neuroscience. In order to diagnose and treat patients, you must not only understand the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders but also how medications for these disorders impact the central nervous system. These concepts of foundational neuroscience can be challenging to understand. Therefore, this Discussion is designed to encourage you to think through these concepts, develop a rationale for your thinking, and deepen your understanding by interacting with your colleagues.
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For this Discussion, review the Learning Resources and reflect on the concepts of foundational neuroscience as they might apply to your role as the psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner in prescribing medications for patients.
- Explain the agonist-to-antagonist spectrum of action of psychopharmacologic agents, including how partial and inverse agonist functionality may impact the efficacy of psychopharmacologic treatments.
- Compare and contrast the actions of g couple proteins and ion gated channels.
- Explain how the role of epigenetics may contribute to pharmacologic action.
- Explain how this information may impact the way you prescribe medications to patients. Include a specific example of a situation or case with a patient in which the psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner must be aware of the medication’s action.
Explanation & Answer
Please view explanation and answer below.
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Discussion: Foundational Neuroscience
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1. Explain the agonist-to-antagonist spectrum of action of psychopharmacologic agents,
including how partial and inverse agonist functionality may impact the efficacy of
psychopharmacologic treatments.
Agonists are medications or drugs that bind to the target receptors and change the
receptor action to generate a response. Antagonists consist of affinity with zero intrinsic
efficacy; thus, they bind to the focused receptor but fail to produce a response. Hence, an
agonist build specific action, and the antagonist opposes a specific activity.
Neurotransmitters that are naturally developed stimulate receptors; thus, they become
agonists. Other medications also stimulate receptors making them agonists. In the
mechanism of partial agonists, the drug stimulator toward response is less powerful than
natural neurotransmitters. There is an evident misconception that antagonist acts in the
opposite since they block agonist actions. Still, even though antagonists prevent agonist
efforts, they cannot act on their own without agonists, thus referred to as silent components
(Lenci et al., 2021).
In contrast, the inverse agonist presents the oppos...
