Anatomical, pharmacological, and molecular diversity of native NMDA receptor subtypes

This chapter compares the anatomical and pharmacological properties of the recombinant NMDA receptor subunits with the properties of native NMDA receptor subtypes. It first summarizes the anatomical distribution of individual receptor subunits and then compares their distributions with those of NMDA receptor subtypes identified in radio ligand binding studies. Radioligand binding studies indicate the presence of at least four pharmacologically distinct populations of NMDA receptors with differing regional distributions. There is substantial regional variation among members of both the NR1 and NR2 subunit families; however, the distributions of the NR2 subunits correspond much more closely to the distributions of the pharmacologically distinct NMDA receptor populations.