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Biological Psychology Summary
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This document contains an English summary of the book Biological Psychology written by Professor James W. Kalat.
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Summary Biological PsychologyChapter 1 The Major Issues
Biological psychologists study the “animal roots” of behavior, relating actions and
experiences to genetics and physiology. In this chapter, we consider three major
issues and themes:
- The relationship between mind and brain
- The roles of nature and nurture
- The ethics of research
Module 1.1 The Mind-Brain Relationship
Biological psychology is the study of the physiological, evolutionary and
developmental mechanisms of behavior and experience. The term biological
psychology emphasizes that the goal is to relate biology to issues of psychology.
This is not only a field of study. It is also a point of view. It holds that the proper way
to understand behavior is in terms of how it evolved and how the functioning of the
brain and other organs controls behavior.
Much of biological psychology concerns brain functioning. Figure 1.1 offers a view
of the human brain from the top (dorsal) and from the bottom (ventral). An inspection
of brain areas reveals distinct subareas. At the microscopic level, we find two kinds
of cells: the neurons (Figure 1.2) and the glia. The activities of neurons and glia
somehow produce an enormous wealth of behavior and experience. This book is
about researchers’ attempts to elaborate on that word “somehow”.
Biological explanations of behavior
Biological explanations of behavior fall into four categories:
- Physiological
- Ontogenetic
- Evolutionary
- Functional
A physiological explanation relates a behavior to the activity of the brain and other
organs. An ontogenetic explanation describes how a structure or behavior
develops, including the influences of genes, nutrition, experiences, and their
interactions. An evolutionary explanation reconstructs the evolutionary history of a
structure or behavior. A functional explanation describes why a structure or
behavior evolved as it did.
, We improve our understanding of behavior by combining these approaches
whenever possible.
The Brain and Conscious Experience
Biological explanations of behavior raise the mind-body or mind-brain problem:
what is the relationship between the mind and the brain? The most widespread view
among nonscientist is, no doubt, dualism, the belief that mind and body are different
kinds of substance that exist independently. René Descartes proposed that mind
and brain interact at a single point in space, which he suggested was the pineal
gland, the smallest unpaired structure he could find in the brain (Figure 1.5).
However, nearly all current philosophers and neuroscientists reject dualism. The
decisive objection is that dualism conflicts with one of the cornerstones of physics,
known as the law of the conservation of matter and energy: So far was we can tell,
the total amount of matter and energy in the universe has been fixed since the Big
Bang that originated it all.
The alternative to dualism is monism, the belief that the universe consists of only
one kind of substance. Various forms of monism are possible, grouped into the
following categories:
- Materialism
the view that everything that exists is material or physical
- Mentalism
the view that only the mind really exists and that the physical world could not
exist unless some mind were aware of it
- Identity position
the view that mental processes and certain kinds of brain processes are the
same thing, described in different terms
Can we be sure that monism is correct? No. However, we adopt it as the most
reasonable working hypothesis. Stimulation of any brain area provokes an
experience, and any experience evokes brain activity. As far as we can tell, you
cannot have mental activity without brain activity.
The function of consciousness is far from obvious. According to the position known
as solipsism, I alone exist, or I alone am conscious. Other people are either like
robots or like the characters in a dream. Although few people take solipsism
seriously, it is hard to imagine evidence to refute it. The difficulty of knowing whether
other people (or animals) have conscious experiences is known as the problem of
other minds.
David Chalmers (1995) distinguished between what he calls the easy problems and
the hard problem of consciousness. The easy problems pertain to such questions
as the difference between wakefulness and sleep and the mechanisms that enable
us to focus our attention. In contrast, the hard problem concerns why and how any
kind of brain activity is associated with consciousness. “Why doesn’t all this
information-processing go on ‘in the dark’, free of any inner feel?” Why does brain
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