Investigating the Effects of Drugs on Drinking Behavior

This chapter is neither a pharmacopeia of agents that affect drinking behavior nor a summary of what we have learned about the control of thirst from pharmacological studies. Readers will find some of each, but my major focus is on the approaches used to identify mechanisms of actions of drugs on water intake. Specifically, the focus will be on problems of interpretation of the effects of drugs on a system whose final output is very easy to measure, but whose controls are multiform and intricate.