Overview of chemical sampling techniques

Although many of the ideas for sampling the chemical microenvironment of the brain were present, at least in nascent form, three decades ago or more, the last 10 years have witnessed a particularly spectacular surge of development, refinement, and use. We are now able to measure virtually any endogenous brain chemical in vivo at commendable levels of sensitivity, selectivity, and speed. The long-dreamt-of goal of being able to correlate neurochemical events with ongoing behavior and/or presentation of salient environmental cues and stimuli has already been largely achieved. Further refinements of existing techniques may well lead to levels of analysis inconceivable even a few years ago. The implications for theory-building and hypothesis-testing are enormous, particularly within such essentially virgin domains as behavioral neuroscience and biological psychiatry. These are truly exciting times.