Physiological Psychology Module 1 PDF

1. Title of the Module CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 2. Overview/Introduction The biological perspective thinks you are the product of biology and physiology. Try to understand the physiology of behaviour: the role of the nervous system in regulating...

1. Title of the Module CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 2. Overview/Introduction The biological perspective thinks you are the product of biology and physiology. Try to understand the physiology of behaviour: the role of the nervous system in regulating behaviour and interacting with the rest of the body. In psychology, it is the only approach that explores emotions, feelings and actions from a biological and thus physical point of view. So, all that is psychological is first of all physiological.This module will help you understand what biological/physiological psychology is all about. 3. Learning Outcome At the end of the chapter the students would be able to: 1. Define physiological psychology and biological psychology. 2. Identify the contributions of notable personalities in philosophy and psychology in the field of physiological psychology/biological psychology 3. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of physiological psychology. 4. Relate one’s experiences that show connection to physiological psychology/biological psychology. 4. Learning Content Definition of Terms Biopsychology is the science of the brain and nervous system and how they influence behavior. This includes the normal function of the brain as well as dealing with an injured brain or one in poor physical condition. Other names for this field include psychobiology and biological psychology (https://www.google.com.ph/search?sxsrf=ALeKk031qgu7VT_wn6sX2m9WFgAgHLyA2g%3A 1597559076986&ei=JNE4X6_mO7HDmAWrsYngCg&q=the+nature+of+.... Biological psychology, also called physiological psychology or behavioral neuroscience, the study of the physiological bases of behaviour. Biological psychology is concerned primarily with the relationship between psychological processes and the underlying physiological events—or, in other words, the mind-body phenomenon. Its focus is the function of the brain and the rest of the nervous system in activities (e.g., thinking, learning, feeling, sensing, and perceiving) recognized as characteristic of humans and other animals. Biological psychology has continually been involved in studying the physical basis for the reception of internal and external stimuli by the nervous system, particularly the visual and auditory systems. Other areas of study have included the physiological bases for motivated behaviour, emotion, learning, memory, cognition, and mental disorders. Also considered are physical factors that directly affect the nervous system, including heredity, metabolism, hormones, disease, drug ingestion, and diet (https://www.britannica.com/science/biological-psychology). Brief History of Biopsychology While biopsychology might seem like a fairly recent development thanks to the introduction of advanced tools and technology for examining the brain, the roots of the field date back thousands of years to the time of the early philosophers. While we now consider the mind and brain synonymous, philosophers and psychologists long debated what was known as the mind/body problem. In other words, philosophers and other thinkers wondered what the relationship was between the mental world and the physical world.1 Philosophers' Views on Biopsychology One important thing to remember is that it is only fairly recently in human history that people have come to understand the actual location of the mind. Aristotle, for example, taught that our thoughts and feelings arose from the heart. Greek thinkers such as Hippocrates and later Plato suggested that the brain was where the mind resides and that it served as the source of all thought and action.2 Later thinkers such as Rene Descartes and Leonardo da Vinci introduced theories about how the nervous system operated. While these early theories were later proven wrong, they did establish the important idea that external stimulation could lead to muscle responses. It was Descartes who introduced the concept of the reflex, although later researchers demonstrated it was the spinal cord that played a critical role in these muscle responses.3 Link Between Biopsychology and Human Behavior Researchers also became interested in understanding how different parts of the brain control human behavior. One early attempt at understanding this led to the development of a pseudoscience known as phrenology. According to this view, certain human faculties could be linked to bumps and indentations of the brain which could be felt on the surface of the skull. While phrenology became quite popular, it was also soon dismissed by other scientists. However, the idea that certain parts of the brain were responsible for certain functions played an important role in the development of future brain research. The famous case of Phineas Gage, a railroad worker who suffered a devastating brain injury, also had an influence on our understanding of how damage to certain parts of the brain could impact behavior and functioning. Newer Biopsychology Research Since those early influences, researchers have continued to make important discoveries about how the brain works and the biological underpinnings of behavior. Research on evolution, the localization of brain function, neurons, and neurotransmitters have advanced our understanding of how biological processes impact thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. If you are interested in the field of biopsychology, then it is important to have an understanding of biological processes as well as basic anatomy and physiology. Three of the most important components to understand are the brain, the nervous system, and neurotransmitters (https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-biopsychology-2794883#toc-philosophers-views-on-bi opsychology) Biological psychologists are interested in measuring biological, physiological, or genetic variables in an attempt to relate them to psychological or behavioural variables. Because all behaviour is controlled by the central nervous system, biological psychologists seek to understand how the brain functions in order to understand behaviour. Key areas of focus include sensation and perception; motivated behaviour (such as hunger, thirst, and sex); control of movement; learning and memory; sleep and biological rhythms; and emotion. As technical sophistication leads to advancements in research methods, more advanced topics such as language, reasoning, decision making, and consciousness are now being studied. Biological psychology has its roots in early structuralist and functionalist psychological studies, and as with all of the major perspectives, it has relevance today. We discuss the history and development of functionalism and structuralism to include the theoretical and methodological aspects of these two approaches within the biological perspective and provide examples of relevant studies. The early structural and functional psychologists believed that the study of conscious thoughts would be the key to understanding the mind. Their approaches to the study of the mind were based on systematic and rigorous observation, laying the foundation for modern psychological experimentation. In terms of research focus, Wundt and Titchener explored topics such as attention span, reaction time, vision, emotion, and time perception, all of which are still studied today. Wundt’s primary method of research was introspection, which involves training people to concentrate and report on their conscious experiences as they react to stimuli. This approach is still used today in modern neuroscience research; however, many scientists criticize the use of introspection for its lack of empirical approach and objectivity. Structuralism was also criticized because its subject of interest – the conscious experience – was not easily studied with controlled experimentation. Structuralism’s reliance on introspection, despite Titchener’s rigid guidelines, was criticized for its lack of reliability. Critics argued that self-analysis is not feasible, and that introspection can yield different results depending on the subject. Critics were also concerned about the possibility of retrospection, or the memory of sensation rather than the sensation itself. Today, researchers argue for introspective methods as crucial for understanding certain experiences and contexts. Two Minnesota researchers (Jones & Schmid, 2000) used autoethnography, a narrative approach to introspective analysis (Ellis, 1999), to study the phenomenological experience of the prison world and the consequent adaptations and transformations that it evokes. Jones, serving a year-and-a-day sentence in a maximum security prison, relied on his personal documentation of his experience to later study the psychological impacts of his experience (https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontopsychology/chapter/2-1-biological-psychology-structuralis m-and-functionalism/). From Structuralism to Functionalism As structuralism struggled to survive the scrutiny of the scientific method, new approaches to studying the mind were sought. One important alternative was functionalism, founded by William James in the late 19th century, described and discussed in his two-volume publication The Principles of Psychology (1890). Built on structuralism’s concern for the anatomy of the mind, functionalism led to greater concern about the functions of the mind, and later on to behaviourism. One of James’s students, James Angell, captured the functionalist perspective in relation to a discussion of free will in his 1906 text Psychology: An Introductory Study of the Structure and Function of Human Consciousness: Inasmuch as consciousness is a systematising, unifying activity, we find that with increasing maturity our impulses are commonly coordinated with one another more and more perfectly. We thus come to acquire definite and reliable habits of action. Our wills become formed. Such fixation of modes of willing constitutes character. The really good man is not obliged to hesitate about stealing. His moral habits all impel him immediately and irrepressibly away from such actions. If he does hesitate, it is in order to be sure that the suggested act is stealing, not because his character is unstable. From one point of view the development of character is never complete, because experience is constantly presenting new aspects of life to us, and in consequence of this fact we are always engaged in slight reconstructions of our modes of conduct and our attitude toward life. But in a practical common-sense way most of our important habits of reaction become fixed at a fairly early and definite time in life. Functionalism considers mental life and behaviour in terms of active adaptation to the person’s environment. As such, it provides the general basis for developing psychological theories not readily testable by controlled experiments such as applied psychology. William James’s functionalist approach to psychology was less concerned with the composition of the mind than with examining the ways in which the mind adapts to changing situations and environments. In functionalism, the brain is believed to have evolved for the purpose of bettering the survival of its carrier by acting as an information processor. In processing information the brain is considered to execute functions similar to those executed by a computer and much like what is shown in Figure 1 below of a complex adaptive system. Source: https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontopsychology/chapter/2-1-biological-psychology-structuralis m-and-functionalism/ Figure 1. Complex Adaptive System. Behaviour is influenced by information gathered from a changing external environment. The functionalists retained an emphasis on conscious experience. John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, Harvey A. Carr, and especially James Angell were the additional proponents of functionalism at the University of Chicago. Another group at Columbia University, including James McKeen Cattell, Edward L. Thorndike, and Robert S. Woodworth, shared a functionalist perspective. Biological psychology is also considered reductionist. For the reductionist, the simple is the source of the complex. In other words, to explain a complex phenomenon (like human behaviour) a person needs to reduce it to its elements. In contrast, for the holist, the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Explanations of a behaviour at its simplest level can be deemed reductionist. The experimental and laboratory approach in various areas of psychology (e.g., behaviourist, biological, cognitive) reflects a reductionist position. This approach inevitably must reduce a complex behaviour to a simple set of variables that offer the possibility of identifying a cause and an effect (i.e., the biological approach suggests that psychological problems can be treated like a disease and are therefore often treatable with drugs). The brain and its functions (Figure 2) garnered great interest from the biological psychologists and continue to be a focus for psychologists today. Cognitive psychologists rely on the functionalist insights in discussing how affect, or emotion, and environment or events interact and result in specific perceptions. Biological psychologists study the human brain in terms of specialized parts, or systems, and their exquisitely complex relationships. Studies have shown neurogenesis in the hippocampus (Gage, 2003). In this respect, the human brain is not a static mass of nervous tissue. As well, it has been found that influential environmental factors operate throughout the life span. Among the most negative factors, traumatic injury and drugs can lead to serious destruction. In contrast, a healthy diet, regular programs of exercise, and challenging mental activities can offer long-term, positive impacts on the brain and psychological development (Kolb, Gibb, & Robinson, 2003). Source:https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontopsychology/chapter/2-1-biological-psychology-stru cturalism-and-functionalism/ Figure 2. Functions of the Brain. Different parts of the brain are responsible for different things. Theories of the relationship between body and mind date back at least to Aristotle, who conjectured that the two exist as aspects of the same entity, the mind being merely one of the body’s functions. In the dualism of French philosopher René Descartes, both the mind and the soul are spiritual entities existing separately from the mechanical operations of the human body. Related to this is the psychological parallelism theory of German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Leibniz believed that mind and body are separate but that their activities directly parallel each other. In recent times behaviourists such as American psychologist John B. Watson moved away from consideration of the spiritual or mental and focused on observable human and animal behaviours and their relationship to the nervous system. Strengths and Weaknesses of Physiological Approach The physiological approach to psychology focuses on our biological make up, and the events that occur in our bodies which cause our behaviour. Mainly, therefore, psychological psychology will focus on the brain, but it will also include study of the nervous system, hormones and genetics (https://www.britannica.com/science/biological-psychology)..  Strengths of the physiological approach Weaknesses of the physiological approach The approach has revealed that a number of areas of the brain have specific Even though this approach tries to be functions. For example, Maguire's study of scientific, it is often impossible to directly taxi drivers shows that the hippocampus is observe the psychological processes we crucial in memory of routes. This clearly want to. For example, we cannot measure has many useful applications for thoughts, so instead we have to measure diagnosing and treating people who have things like blood flow. An increase in problems after brain damage. blood flow may not be the same as a The approach is very scientific. It change in thought processes. performs very carefully controlled Our limited ability to study brain processes experiments which are therefore likely to be directly and objectively means we often replicable and produce reliable results. have to rely on self-report data, and so The physiological approach can take demand characteristics may be a advantage of sophisticated equipment problem. For example, in Dement and such as PET and MRI scanners which Kleitman’s study, subjects could have provide an objective and precise way of falsified reports about whether or not they measuring brain structures. For example in were dreaming, or falsified the content of the Maguire et al. study the researchers their dreams. were able to scan living brains using PET Studies carried out in the laboratory can be and MRI technology which enabled the low in ecological validity. Dement and researchers to gain lots of quantitative and Kleitman had subjects spend the night in a objective data about the density of the sleep laboratory. We sleep differently when grey matter of the hippocampus. Dematte we are not in our own beds, and this used the olfactometer which enable strict certainly must have been the case since control over the intensity of odors. each subject was not only in a strange bed, but was wired up to an EEG machine, woken by a doorbell at intervals throughout the night and observed. Schacter and Singer injected participants to induce physiological arousal and this is clearly artificial and not a typical every day experience. Furthermore, the laboratory surroundings lacked ecological validity and the situation of experiencing unexplained physiological arousal is rare. Source: http://psychtutor.weebly.com/physiological-psychology.html