Covering: January 1999–December 2001. Previous review: Nat. Prod. Rep., 1999, 16, 485. Recent developments in the understanding of the molecular function of memory and other CNS-mediated processes have arisen from the multidisciplinary interplay of excitatory amino acid synthesis and medicinal chemistry, X-ray crystallographic structural protein analysis, molecular biology, pharmacology and physiology. This review seeks to place recent synthetic developments of EAA analogues in the wider pharmacological setting, illustrating the need for and importance of these compounds.