Chapter 1 Lecture

Study Notes

Biological psychology studies the physiological, evolutionary, and developmental mechanisms of behavior and experience.
It focuses on how the nervous system interacts with the rest of the body to control behavior.
This includes the central nervous system (CNS) and peripheral nervous system (PNS).
Specific topics of study range from normal functions to pathologies such as arousal, addiction, aggression, ADHD, anxiety/fear, Alzheimer's disease, etc.

Behavioral neuroscience is the study of the physiological, evolutionary, and developmental mechanisms of behavior and experience.
It focuses on the functioning of the nervous system and its interactions with the body to control behavior.
Behavioral neuroscientists work in universities (conducting basic research and teaching), research institutes (conducting basic research), or pharmaceutical/biotechnology industries (conducting applied research).
Various disciplines contribute to this field including neurology, endocrinology, psychiatry, neuroanatomy, neurochemistry, electrophysiology, developmental biology, and molecular biology.

Simplification: procedures to reduce complexity of experimental analysis without changing the level of analysis.
Generalization: general conclusions based on many observations.
Reductionism: analyzes complex behavior into elementary components, aiming to find brain, neuronal, and molecular mechanisms.
Explanatory reductionism: determines system knowledge of components to explain system properties, leading to partial and heuristic explanatory reductionism.
Proximate explanations include physiological (relationship between behavior and brain activity) and ontogenetic (development within an individual).
Ultimate explanations include functional (purpose served by behavior, survival adaptation) and phylogenetic (evolutionary organization of behavior).

Mentalism: a philosophical position that an immaterial mind is responsible for behavior.
Dualism: the belief the body is physical but the mind is not; mind and brain are separate but interact.
Monism: the belief the world consists only of matter and energy and the mind is a part of it; the mind is the activity of the brain.

Easy Problem: identifies brain activity related to specific experiences/behaviors.
Hard Problem: explaining how consciousness emerges from brain activity.

Blindsight: a condition where people with damage to their visual cortex can respond to visual stimuli without consciously perceiving them, which suggests some behavior can occur unconsciously.
Split brains: surgical split corpus callosum to control epileptic seizures, resulting in inability to name objects presented to the right visual field, but able to retrieve them with the left hand, showing distinction of brain function in absence of consciousness.
Unilateral neglect: damage to right parietal cortex affecting awareness of left side of objects, including self.

What is an animal's rights? Multiple perspectives exist on this.
Animals are used for research for a variety of purposes to better human and animal health, conservation, etc.
Ethical concerns center on refining, reducing, and replacing the use of animals in research.
Ethical issues include animal rights activism (Abolitionists, Minimalists), legislation, and official guidelines concerning animal research.