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Introduction: Over the last decade the role of excitatory amino acids (EAAs) in the central nervous system has been the focus of much research and there is now widespread evidence that EAAs are critical to a number of aspects of brain function, such as long term potentiation and neural degeneration. They exert their effects through a variety of different receptor subtypes which have been classified on the basis of selective agonist and antagonist actions as (1) N-methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) receptors, (2) kainic acid (KA) receptors, (3) 2-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazol propionic acid (AMPA) receptors, which were originally named quisqualic acid (QA) receptors because they are also activated by QA, (4) amino-4-phosphobutyric acid (L-AP-4) receptors and (5) metabotropic receptors which are activated by QA and trans-1-amino-cyclopentyl-1,1,3-dicarboxylic acid (Fagg & Masssieu, 1991). These receptors are now regarded as a primary target for drug development for a variety of conditions such as epilepsy,