[Ethologic study of the sequelae of prenatal exposure to psychotropic agents]

The consequences of the use of pharmacological agents during pregnancy and delivery can manifest themselves not only in the form of morphological deformities of the fetus but also in the behavioral disturbances at the later age. The experiments on laboratory animals open wide possibilities for detecting the psychotropic agents with a potential ability of disturbing the offspring behavior. These properties were demonstrated for narcotic analgesics, ethanol, some tranquillizers and other drugs. The methods of computed ethological pharmacology enable us to reveal the changes in the structures of behavior of the animals treated with the drugs which cannot be detected by any other methods.