chapter 1 - BioPsych

• 1.     What is Biopsychology?

  ·        Biopsychology is the scientific study of the biology of behavior (Dewsbury, 1991).

               Also called: Psychobiology, Behavioral Biology, Behavioral Neuroscience
• Brain and behavior - Biopsychology focuses on the relation between them.
• Origins

  ·        A distinct area in psychology in the 19th century

  ·        Hebb's The Organization of Behavior (1949) is key factor in the development.

  ·        Hebb developed the first comprehensive theory of how complex psychological phenomena might be produced by brain activity (perceptions, emotions, thoughts, & memories).

   
• ·        Biopsychologists study how the brain & nervous system determine what we perceive, feel, think, say, & do.

  ·        Ultimate challenge for the human brain: To understand something as complex as itself.

   
• ·        A biopsychologist uses an eclectic combination of theories and research from many different areas to better describe, understand and predict behavior.

  ·        Some fields: Psychology, biology, physiology, pharmacology, and human anatomy.
• Neuroscience is the study of the nervous system
• Neurochemistry - The study of the chemical bases of neural activity
• Neuroendocrinology - The study of interactions between the nervous system and the endocrine system
• • Neuropathology The study of nervous system disorders
• Neuropharmacology - The study of the effects of drugs on neural activity
• Neurophysiology - The study of the functions & activities of the nervous system
• -         Psychology - the scientific study of behavior the scientific study of all overt activities of the organism as well as all the internal processes that are presumed to underlie them

              (e.g., learning, memory, motivation, perception, and emotion)
• Biopsychology integrates these various approaches to the study of the nervous system.
• Biopsychologists try to discover how the various phenomena studied by other neuroscience researchers produce psychological phenomena such as perception, learning, memory, emotion, and language.
• Thus, biopsychology can be viewed as a bridge between the disciplines of psychology and neuroscience
• -         The human brain is an amazingly intricate network of neurons (cells that receive and transmit electrochemical signals).
• -         Consider the 100 billion neurons in complex array, the estimated 100 trillion connections among them, and the almost infinite number of paths that neural signals can follow.
• Three Dimensions

  1.      human VS. non-human subject

  2.      experimental VS. non-experimental studies

  3.      applied VS. pure research

   
• Human Vs. Non-Human Subjects

    The ethics of both human and animal research is carefully scrutinized by independent committees.
• Experiments

  Method used by scientists to determine cause-and-effect relationship.
• Non-Experiments

  ·        Quasi-experiments examine subjects in real world situations.

  ·        Option when it's impossible to conduct controlled experiments; e.g., if humans subjects are involved, it may be impossible for ethical or technical reasons.
• (EXPERIMENT) Independent variables are manipulated by the experimenter; Dependent variables reflect the subject's behavior
• "Case Study"

  ·        Is a non-experimental scientific study that focus on a single subject.

  ·        Main problem: Poor generalizability (or the extent to which their results tells us something about the general population).

   
• Pure Research

  ·        Is motivated primarily by the curiosity of the researcher & by the desire to find out how things work.
• Pure Research

  ·        It focuses on establishing building blocks or basic concepts that may provide information relevant to many problems.
• Applied Research

  ·        Is motivated by an attempt to directly use the building blocks of basic research to answer specific questions.
• Applied Research

  human & animal problems are specifically address
• Physiological Psychology

  ·        Focuses on the direct manipulation of the nervous system in controlled laboratory settings (e.g. Lesions, electrical stimulation, invasive recording).

  ·        Thus, subjects are usually laboratory animals.

  ·        Strong focus on pure research.
• Psychopharmacology

  ·        Similar to physiological psychology except that the nervous system is manipulated pharmacologically.

  ·        Focuses on drug effects on behavior & how these changes are mediated by changes in neural activity.

  ·        Pure research: use drugs to reveal the nature of brain-behavior interactions; Applied research (e.g., Drug abuse, therapeutic drugs).
• Neuropsychology

  ·        Focuses on the behavioral deficits produced in humans by brain damage, typically cortical damage. 

  ·         Can't be studied in humans by experimentation; deals almost exclusively with case studies and quasi-experimental studies.

  ·         Most applied; neuropsychological tests of brain-damaged patients facilitate diagnosis, treatment, and lifestyle counseling.
• Psychophysiology

  ·        Focuses on the relation between physiology and behavior by recording the physiological responses of human subjects.

  ·        Because humans are used, all brain recording is noninvasive (i.e., from the surface of the head).

  ·        Usual measure of brain activity is the scalp electroencephalogram (EEG).

  ·         Other Common Measures: Muscle tension, eye movement, heart rate, pupil dilation, and electrical conductance of the skin.
• Cognitive Neuroscience

  ·        Newest division of biopsychology

  ·        Focuses on the neural bases of cognitive processes like learning & memory, attention, & complex perceptual processes.

  ·        Often employs human subjects; Key methods are noninvasive, functional brain imaging techniques

  ·        Often involves collaborations between researchers with widely different backgrounds (e.g., Psychology, linguistics, computer science).

   
• Comparative Psychology

  ·        Study of evolutionary and genetic factors in behavior

  ·        Features comparative and functional approaches

  ·        Features laboratory research as well as studies of animals in their natural environments (ethology).
• -         Progress is greatest when several different approaches, each compensating for shortcomings of the others, are used to solve the same problems; This is called Converging Operations.
• • Neuropsychology's strength is that it deals with humans, but this is also its weakness because it precludes experimentation.
• Physiological Psychology - In contrast, physiological psychology can bring the power of the experimental method & invasive neuroscientific techniques to bear on the question, but it is limited to the study of laboratory animals.

   
• Converging Operations

  ·        Because the two approaches complement one another, together they can provide evidence for points of view that neither can defend individually.

   
• Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome - It is a pathological condition of the brain which is basically caused by deficiency of vitamin B1.
• How do scientists study the unobservable by a method that is fundamentally unobservable?

  By SCIENTIFIC INFERENCE.
•   Scientists observe the consequences of unobservable processes.