In this paper we will give an overview of the past and present status of Gravitational Wave (GW) research associated with pulsars, taking into account the target sensitivity achieved from interferometric laser GW antennas such as Tama, Geo, Ligo and Virgo. We will see that the upper limits obtained with searches for periodic GW begin to be astrophysically interesting by imposing non-trivial constraints on the structure and evolution of the neutron stars. We will give prospects for the future detection of pulsar GW signals, with Advanced Ligo and Advanced Virgo and future enhanced detectors, e.g. the Einstein Telescope.