Differentiation of classical and novel antipsychotics using animal models

The criteria that have been used to differentiate classical and atypical antipsychotics include measures of neurological and cognitive side effects and therapeutic effects. Novel antipsychotic compounds with few or no extrapyramidal syndromes (EPS) can be differentiated from classical neuroleptics by a number of animal models for limbic selectivity and dose-response separation between behavioral and pharmacological parameters analogous to EPS and antipsychotic effects. The results obtained using these models seem to be concordant with clinical findings. Moreover, animal models expand our understanding of the pharmacological mechanisms responsible for EPS and for the therapeutic effects of antipsychotics, and they allow an examination of the possible effects of new compounds on cognition. Here we review a number of key reports on the differentiation of classical and novel antipsychotics using animal models.