Introduction: Major Issues

• Defined as a systematized body of knowledge based on facts gathered

  through observation, experimentation and experiences that will lead to the formulation of a verifiable conclusion which is beneficial to man.

  Science
• Requires PhD or PsyD. Employed by hospital, clinic, private practice, or college. Helps people with emotional problems.


  Clinical Psychologist
• Requires PhD or PsyD. Employed by hospital, clinic, private practice, or college. Helps people make educational, vocational, and other decisions.


  Counseling Psychologists
• Requires master's degree or PhD. Most are employed by a school system. Identifies educational needs of schoolchildren, devises a plan to meet the needs, and then helps teachers implement it.


  School Psychologist
• Practicing medicine requires an MD plus about 4 years of additional study and practice in a specialization. Physicians are employed by hospitals, clinics, medical schools and in private practice. Some conduct research in addition to seeing patients.


  Medical Fields
• Treats people with brain damage or diseases of the brain.

  Neurologist
• Perform brain surgery 


  Neurosurgeon
• Helps people with emotional distress or troublesome behaviors, sometimes using drugs or other medical procedures.


  Psychiatrist
• These fields ordinarily require a master's degree or more. Practitioners are employed by hospitals, clinics, private practice, and medical schools.


  Allied medical field
• Provides exercise and other treatments to help people with muscle or nerve problems, pain, or anything else that impairs movement.


  Physical therapist
• Helps people improve their ability to perform functions of daily life, for example, after a stroke.


  Occupational therapist
• Helps people deal with personal and family problems. The activities of a clinical social worker overlap those of a clinical psychologist.


  Social Worker
• Research positions ordinarily require a PhD. Researchers are employed by universities, hospitals, pharmaceutical firms, and research institutes.


  Research fields
• Studies the anatomy, biochemistry, or physiology of the nervous system. 


  Neuroscientists
• Investigates how functioning of the brain and other organs influences behavior.


  Behavioral neuroscientist
• It is synonymous to psychobiologist, biopsychologist, or physiological psychologist


  Behavioral neuroscientist
• Uses brain research, such as scans of brain anatomy or activity, to analyze and explore people’s knowledge, thinking, and problem solving.


  Cognitive neuroscientists
• Conducts behavioral tests to determine the abilities and disabilities of people with various kinds of brain damage, and changes in their condition over time. Most neuropsychologists have a mixture of psychological and medical training; they work in hospitals and clinics.

  Neuropsychologist
• Measures heart rate, breathing rate, brain waves, and other body processes and how they vary from one person to another or one situation to another.


  Psychophysiologist
• Investigates the chemical reactions in the brain


  Neurochemist
• Compares the behaviors of different species and tries to relate them to their ways of life.


  Comparative psychologist
• almost synonyms: ethologist, animal behaviorist

  Comparative psychologist
• Relates behaviors, especially social behaviors, including those of humans, to the functions they have served and, therefore, the presumed selective pressures that caused them to evolve.


  Evolutionary psychologist
• almost synonym: sociobiologist

  Evolutionary psychologist
• Require a PhD, PsyD, or master’s degree. In most cases, their work is not directly related to neuroscience. However, practitioners often need to understand it enough to communicate with a client’s physician.

  Practitioner Fields of Psychology
• Describe reasons biological psychologists conduct much of their research on nonhuman animals.

  1. The underlying mechanisms of behavior are similar across species and sometimes easier to study in a nonhuman species.
  2. We are interested in animals for their own sake.
  3. What we learn about animals sheds light on human evolu- tion.
  4. Legal or ethical restrictions prevent certain kinds of research on humans.
• How does an evolutionary explanation differ from a functional explanation?

  An evolutionary explanation states what evolved from

  what. For example, humans evolved from earlier primates and therefore have certain features that we inherited from those ancestors, even if the features are not useful to us today. A functional explanation states why something was advantageous and therefore favored by natural selection.
• What are the “three R’s” in the legal standards for animal research?

  1. Reduction
  2. Replacement
  3. Refinement
• How does the “minimalist” position differ from the “abolitionist” position?

  “minimalist” wishes to limit animal research to

  studies with little discomfort and much potential value. An “abolitionist” wishes to eliminate all animal research regardless of how the animals are treated or how much value the research might produce
• Unique


  Strikingly different - not identical with any animal
• Each species, even each individual, is unique in the sense of being strikingly different
• The term 'unique' used in the absolute sense (that the gap between man and animals cannot be bridged) is scientifically meaningless
• Biological psychology


  The study of the physiological, evolutionary, and developmental mechanisms of behavior and experience
• All of psychology is biological as humans are biological organisms
• Much of psychology is best described in terms of cultural, social, and cognitive influences
• Much of psychology is also best understood in terms of genetics, evolution, hormones, body physiology, and brain mechanisms
• This textbook concentrates mostly on brain mechanisms, but also discusses other biological influences
• Three major issues considered in this chapter

  • The relationship between mind and brain
  • The roles of nature and nurture
  • The ethics of research
• The mind-brain problem or mind-body problem is the question of how mind relates to brain activity
• No one has offered a convincing explanation of consciousness so far