Professor David Curtis's research is concerned with the effect of chemical compounds upon nerve cells located in various parts of the central nervous system. He has pioneered the techniques for precise micropharmacological investigations upon single nerve cells. The agents are applied electrophoretically from multi-barrel glass micropipettes in close proximity to single neurones whose responses are being recorded. A study of greatest importance has been concerned with the excitant and depressant actions of some hundreds of amino acids, which has allowed a correlation of action with chemical structure, and hence gives insight into the nature of the receptor patches on nerve cells. Acetylcholine has been established as a transmitter at certain synapses and the pharmacological analyses of synaptic structure of other transmitters to be determined.