The neuropsychological significance of stereotypy induced by stimulant drugs

Abstract The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the neuropsychological significance of stereotyped behaviour, in particular that induced by psychomotor stimulant drugs such as amphetamine. Behavioural stereotypy is a phenomenon with connotations in wide aspects of psychology, including animal learning theory, ethology, human experimental psychology, particularly in analyses of skilled or automatic performance, and in neuropsychological studies of brain-damaged patients. Stereotypy is also frequently observed in the psychopathology of man and other animals. There is, of course, no guarantee that all of these forms of stereotypy are related by common psychological processes and this will be one of the questions to be addressed below. We will be concentrating on the behavioural and neural mechanisms underlying stereotypy, because these aspects have previously been somewhat neglected in favour of a more neuropharmacological approach.