midterm biopsy

• Man


  Unique among animals, strikingly different, "essentially different"
• All psychology is biological
• Everything you do or think is part of your biology
• Much of psychology is best understood in terms of genetics, evolution, hormones, body physiology, and brain mechanisms
• The focus is mostly on brain mechanisms, but also discusses the other biological influences
• Three major issues


  • The relationship between mind and brain
  • The roles of nature and nurture
  • The ethics of research
• Biological psychologists


  Try to explain behavior in terms of its physiology, development, evolution, and function
• Gottfried Leibniz posed the first question: "Why is there something rather than nothing?"
• The universe had to be self-created
• Given the existence of a universe, why this particular kind of universe? Could the universe have been fundamentally different?
• String theorists concluded that this is not the only possible universe
• The universe could have taken a vast number of forms with different laws of physics
• Of all those possible universes, how many could have supported life?
• The universe could have been different in many ways, nearly all of which would have made life impossible
• The hypothesis that a huge number of other universes really do exist goes beyond the reach of empirical science
• The mind–brain problem or the mind–body problem is the question of how mind relates to brain activity
• Given a universe composed of matter and energy, why is there such a thing as consciousness?
• No one has offered a convincing explanation of consciousness
• Consciousness is something we experience, and it calls for an explanation, even if we do not yet see how to explain it
• Consciousness is a fundamental property of matter
• Biological psychology


  The study of the physiological, evolutionary, and developmental mechanisms of behavior and experience
• Biopsychology, psychobiology, physiological psychology, and behavioral neuroscience


  Approximately synonymous with biological psychology
• Biological psychology


  A field of study and a point of view that we think and act as we do because of brain mechanisms, and that we evolved those brain mechanisms
• Biological psychology deals mostly with brain activity
• Two kinds of cells in the brain


  • Neurons
  • Glia
• Neurons


  Convey messages to one another and to muscles and glands, vary enormously in size, shape, and functions
• Glia


  Generally smaller than neurons, have many functions but do not convey information over great distances
• The activities of neurons and glia somehow produce an enormous wealth of behavior and experience
• Perception


  Occurs in your brain, not in your skin or in the object you see
• Monism


  The idea that the universe consists of only one type of being (mental activity and brain activity are the same thing)
• Dualism


  The idea that minds are one type of substance and matter is another
• Humans don't always know the reasons for their own behaviors
• Four categories of biological explanations of behavior


  • Physiological
  • Ontogenetic
  • Evolutionary
  • Functional
• Physiological explanation


  Relates a behavior to the activity of the brain and other organs, deals with the machinery of the body
• Ontogenetic explanation


  Describes how a structure or behavior develops, including the influences of genes, nutrition, experiences, and their interactions
• Evolutionary explanation


  Reconstructs the evolutionary history of a structure or behavior, the characteristic features of an animal are almost always modifications of something found in ancestral species
• Functional explanation


  Describes why a structure or behavior evolved as it did, identifies the advantage that led to it being favored by natural selection
• Many careers relate to biological psychology, including various research fields, certain medical specialties, and counseling and psychotherapy
• Researchers study animals because the mechanisms are sometimes easier to study in nonhumans, they are interested in animal behavior for its own sake, they want to understand the evolution of behavior, and certain kinds of experiments are difficult or impossible with humans
• Using animals in research is ethically controversial, some research does inflict stress or pain on animals, but many research questions can be investigated only through animal research