Recent advances in serotonin research II: Polymerase chain reaction to positron emission tomography

This issue contains the method-oriented papers from an interdisciplinary conference held at the Serotonin Club meeting in New Orleans. The techniques are described in detail with attention given to making the 'tricks-of-the-trade' known to the reader. This short review compares these methods to those presented at the first 'Advances in Serotonin Research' meeting in Los Angeles in 1981. The emerging dominance of molecular biology and pharmacology in serotonin research is reflected by this collection of papers. The strong interdisciplinary nature of these new methods, their greater sensitivity and selectivity and their application to human material makes the distance between polymerase chain reaction and positron emission tomography appear trivial.