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Summary Biology of Psychology
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Chapter 1: Introduction to PsychobiologyIntroduction
What is Psychobiology?
- Psychobiology: a subdiscipline of psychology that seeks to explain behavior in
terms of biological mechanisms. Also known as biopsychology, biological
psychology and behavioral neuroscience.
- Neuroscience: is a multidisciplinary study of the nervous system, including
subdivisions social neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience and clinical
neuroscience.
- Behavior is not necessarily caused by biology, environment and behavior can also
change biology. Ends in a circular argument, a tautology.
Reductionism: reducing complexities (in this case behavior) down to their basic
constituent parts.
- In psychobiology there are different levels of investigation, usually starting with
large regions temporal lobes and memory) to smaller identifiable groups of
nerves (hippocampus and memory).
- Limitations: we sometimes lose sight of important complex details. With the
unison of these basic elements there are emergent properties that cannot be
explain through reductionist methods.
- Pros: we can ask more specific questions, understand the basic elements.
Especially when looking at genes.
- Holism: Considers the whole organism rather than individual components, we are
organisms with components (genes, cells etc.) but there are emergent properties
which reflect the whole system.
History of Neuroscience
- 2500 BC south american skulls show trepanning (hole drill)
- 1600 BC papyrus with cranial structure, head injury and behavioral consequences
- 500 BC Alcmaeon of Croton, claimed optic nerve carries sensory information and
as hollow tube.
- Plato: brain was the location of mental life
- Aristotle: 384 BC heart as organ of thought and feeling.
- 335- 280 BC Herophilus identified the spinal cord as the source from which
nerves came and identified the cerebrum as site of voluntary movement.
- 130 BC Galen and humors in the ventricles, (blood= hopeful and amorous
behavior named sanguine), (yellow bile coming from spleen = choleric associated
with bad temper and violence) (black bile from gallbladder= considered
melancholic and associated with irritability and sleeplessness, symptoms of
depression), (phlegm in brain and lungs= calm and unemotional)
,- 320: Nemesius claimed that the mind not the soul could be localized in the
ventricles: first ventricle is common sense, second reasoning, thinking and
wisdom 3rd memories
- 1452: Da Vinci, human direction and injecting wax into blood vessels
- 1596: Rene Descartes: mind and body are separate entities, substance dualism.
Animal spirits operate the muscles and tendons that initiate movements.
- Thomas Willis (1621-1675): introduced the term Neurology (Univesity Oxford)
- Galvani: electrical nature of neural conduction
- Luigi Rolando: used electricity to stimulate the brain of the cortex in animals,
voluntary action was under control of the cortex in animals
- 1787 Johannes Purkinje was the first to describe a nerve cell in detail, discovered
large nerve cells in the cerebellum.
Points of View in Psychobiology
Physiological Psychology
- study neural mechanism underlying specific behaviors
- controlled experiments which often use lesions of regions in order to determine its
function - How do they create lesions? electricity to burn out neuron, chills and
scalpel
- Not on humans. Commonly: rats.
Psychophysiology
- Studies the relationship between the physiological activity of the brain and
psychological processes. E.g How the brain's electrical activity differs during
certain parts of a task (lie detector). Not to be confused with physiological
psychology.
Psychopharmacology
- How drugs modify the brain and subsequently behavior. Drugs are tools for
investigating the brain and not primarily for treating people. Understanding
neurotransmitters.
- On animals or humans (e.g clinical trials)
Neuropsychology
- the study of the consequences of brain damage - cannot be performed directly
on humans
- Using people who already suffered brain damage through accidents, surgery,
infections.
- Often deals with case studies since the damage is unique to the individual, or
quasi experiments.
- Effects of brain damage are assessed using neuropsychological tests and
neuroimaging.
,Cognitive Neuroscience
- Combines cognitive psychology and biopsychology.
- Cognitive processes are investigated within a neuroscience context.
- brain imaging techniques, but no need for brain damage
- See how active the brain is during certain tasks.
Social/Affective Neuroscience
- Affective neuroscience is the neural processing of emotional information.
Comparative Psychology
- compares human behavior with that of animals
- Based on Darwin, to try understand evolutionary and adaptive nature of behavior
- studying animals in their natural habitat, ethological research
- Evolutionary psychology: seek to understand current behavior as adaptations
of behavior from our ancestors.
Behavioral Genetics
- Similar to evolutionary psychology. The goal is to understand the the genetic basis
of behavior, characteristic or disorder.
- Establish hereditary patterns of behavior, using family and twin studies,
biotechnology to investigate our genes .
- Can modify genes of animals and see how behavior changes
Computational Neuroscience
- Modelling human behavior and the underlying neural activity using a computer or
machine.
- Using basic elements to create a brain circuit (microcircuit).
- 2013 Human Brain Project: 10 year program to simulate the human brain in a
supercomputer
- The problem is that human behavior does not obey true scientific rules. No
absolutes.
Ethics: Bioethics and Neuroethics
- Psychobiology likes to use controlled experiments or studies.
- Experiments are published only if they fulfill all the requirements of an ethically
acceptable procedure.
- Ethical guidelines are provided by the british psychological society, BPS
- Avoid misleading or excessive claims, inadequate safeguards monitoring of the
study and falsifying data,
- Ethics code is based on four principles: respect, competence, responsibility and
integrity
- Bioethics: a new area of philosophy that addresses issues
, Animal Research
- Why do we use animals? Because we are animals who share many similarities
with other species.
- An area with a lot of debate
- Anti Vivisection movement: some scientists are members, has 2 main objections
to animal research 1) it is unethical to experiment with animals. 2) there isn't high
scientific validity in said studies
- Animal experimentation in UK and EU
- UK: implement the scientific procedures act 1986, carried out on any vertebrate ,
consists of the 3 r’s , three licences are needed from the home office before
animal experiments can commence.
- 3 2’s: reducing the number of animals used, refining procedures to minimize pain
and suffering and replacing animal experiments with alternatives where possible
- USA: the first law in regulating animal research was the laboratory animal welfare
act (AWA) intended to stop pet theft to laboratories, enforced by inspection
service, avoid unintended duplications of experiments. AWA does not cover rats
mice and birds because they don't have resources to inspect.
Chapter 2: Genetics and Evolution
Introduction
- We know more about genetics now than we ever have - advances thanks to the
Human Genome Project: focused on the varieties of molecular structures of
genes to determine the base pairs that make up human DNA
‣ 20.000 genes
‣ < 2% of DNA are functional genes coding for proteins
- The power of genetics has given rise to a new branch of philosophy called
bioethics which looks at the consequences of manipulating DNA
- Richard Dawkins: challenged the idea of god as the creator with science - pro-
creationism
❖ all humans are 99,9% identical, 0,1% make up the difference
❖
❖ key steps of traits: variation, heritability, struggle for existence and reproductive
rates
Evolution
- out of Africa hypothesis: 200.000 years ago homo sapiens appeared in Africa;
50.000 years ago humans began to migrate out of Africa
- qualitative traits: often influenced by single gene and follow a simple pattern of
inheritance; unaffected by environmental factors; e.g. Huntington’s Disease
‣ penetrance: an allele which does not always lead to the disorder is said
to have low penetrance
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