psychology 302: introduction to biopsychology

Psychology 302:Introduction to Biopsychology

MTWTF 11am-12:45pm

Instructor: Katrina Nicholas

Pinel's Biopsychology, 5th Ed.

My training, research, & teaching experience

• BA in linguistics & BS in biology with honors in neuroscience

• Undergrad research assistant in cognitive science laboratory

• Currently a psychology grad student studying genetics underlying linguistic behavior

• Taught research methods lab sections past five fall and spring semesters


Availability

• Office location: Communication 306

• Office hours: by appointment

• Office phone: 626-6593

• Email: [email protected]• Website:

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~katrina/PSYC302.html


Syllabus

• Prerequisites• Required text• Course objectives &

assignments• Grading & extra credit• Attendance & late work

policy• Accommodations• Academic integrity• Expected classroom

behavior


Daily structure

• first lecture: 11am-11:50am

• break: 11:50am-11:55am

• second lecture: 11:55am-12:45pm


Tentative Class Schedule

• Exams dates:

EXAM 1 - Friday, June 9




FINAL EXAM (cumulative) -

Thursday, July 6


Tentative Class Schedule

• In-class debates:

Debate 1 - Wednesday, June 7





Lecture format

• lectures will be based on assigned readings from textbook (exams will be based on readings, class notes, and videos)

• each lecture will begin with an outline

• sometimes a summary of previous lecture

• questions or comments are encouraged throughout the lecture - Don’t be shy :-)


Getting to know you…

• first & last name• email address• hometown• major (& minor)• class standing• academic interests• non-academic interests

What is Biopsychology?

Chapter 1


Outline

1. The Field of Biopsychologya. Study of biological bases of behaviorb. Characterized by an eclectic approach

2. Biopsychology as a Discipline of Neurosciencea. What is Neuroscience?b. Biopsychology as a Part of Neuroscience

3. The Diversity of Biological Researcha. Human and Non-human subjectsb. Experiments and Non-experimentsc. Pure and Applied Research


Outline4. The Six Divisions of Biopsychology

5. How do Biopsychologists Work Together?

6. Scientific Inference: How do Biopsychologists Study the Unobservable?


The Field of Biopsychology


Study of Biological Bases of Behavior

• brain and behavior are two of the most interesting subjects of scientific research

• biopsychology focuses on the relation between them



• biopsychology began to emerge as a distinct area in psychology towards the end of the 19th century

• Hebb’s The Organization of Behavior (1949) is thought to be key factor in the field’s development



• biopsychologists study how the brain and the rest of the nervous system determine what we perceive, feel, think, say, and do

• this may prove to be the ultimate challenge for the human brain…

Does our brain have the capacity to understand something as complex as itself?


Characterized by an eclectic approach

• a biopsychologist uses an eclectic combination of theories and research from many different areas (psychology, biology, physiology, pharmacology, and anatomy) to better describe, understand and predict behavior


Biopsychology as a Discipline of Neuroscience


What is Neuroscience?

• Until the middle of the last century, the brain was studied primarily by philosophers;

since then, it has been subjected more and more to scientific study


What is Neuroscience?

• neuroscience is the study of the nervous system; neuroscience includes many different approaches such as:

neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, neurochemistry, neuroendrocrinology, neuropharmacology, and neuropathology


Biopsychology as part of Neuroscience

• biopsychology integrates these various approaches to the study of the nervous system



• biopsychologists try to discover how the various phenomena studied by other neuroscience researchers produce psychological phenomena such as perception, learning, memory, emotion,

and language



• Thus, biopsychology can be viewed as a bridge between the disciplines of psychology and neuroscience



• The course will examine the fundamentals of neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and neuropharmacology

• The rest of the course will focus on how these biological fundamentals are applied to the study of biopsychological phenomena


The Diversity of Biopsychological Research

• biopsychologists use variety of research approaches in their studies; to understand what biopsychology is, you must understand what they do


The Diversity of Biopsychological Research

• This diversity can be illustrated by discussing three dimensions along which their research varies:

(1) human vs. non-human subjects

(2) experimental vs. non-experimental studies

(3) applied vs. pure research


Human & Non-human Subjects

• Advantages of human

(1) can follow instructions

(2) can report subjective experiences

(3) are often less expensive

(4) have a human brain

• Advantages of non- human

(1) have simpler nervous systems

(2) possible to use comparative, cross-species approach

(3) fewer ethical constraints


Human & Non-human Subjects

• The ethics of both human and animal research is carefully scrutinized by independent committees


Experiments & Non-Experiments

• biopsychological research can involve experiments and non-experimental studies (quasiexperimental designs and case studies)


Experiments

• method used by scientists to determine cause-and-effect relationship

• when a different group of subjects is tested under each treatment condition of the experiment; this is a between-subjects design

• when same group of subjects can be tested under multiple treatment conditions; this is a within-subjects design


Experiments

• Independent variables are manipulated by the experimenter; these manipulations produce different treatment conditions in an experiment

• Dependent variables reflect the subject’s behavior; this is what the experiment measures


Experiments

• In a well-designed experiment, the experimenter can conclude that any differences in the dependent variable between the various treatment conditions were caused by the independent variable


Experiments

• It is often difficult in practice to make sure that there is only one difference among conditions; other unintended differences among conditions that can influence the dependent variable are called confounded variables


Experiments

• the presence of confounded variables makes experiments difficult to interpret because it is impossible to tell how much (if any) of the effect on the dependent variable was caused by the independent variable and how much (if any) was caused by the confounded variable


Non-experiments

• sometimes it is impossible to conduct controlled experiments; e.g., if humans subjects are involved, it may be impossible for ethical or technical reasons to assign them to particular conditions and to administer the conditions


Non-experiments

• In a quasi-experimental design researchers examine subjects in real world situations who have self-selected into the specific conditions (e.g., excessive alcohol intake); in a sense these subjects have assigned themselves to the treatment conditions


Non-experiments

• The major short-coming of a quasiexperimental study is that although researchers can examine relations between the variables of interest (e.g., alcohol consumption’s relation to brain damage), a quasi study cannot control for potential confounding variables


Non-experiments

• Therefore quasiexperimental studies do not allow a researcher to establish direct cause-and-effect relationships


Non-experiments

• Example: researchers cannot randomly assign humans to Control and Alcohol groups, and then expose one group to 10 years of chronic alcohol exposure to see if a alcohol causes brain damage; instead they must compare the brains of alcoholics and non-alcoholics found in the real world


Non-experiments

• Key Problem: because subjects in the real world do not assign themselves to groups randomly, there are many other differences among the groups that could contribute to differences in the dependent measures. (For example, brain damage may be due to poor diet, accidental head injury, other drug use, etc.)


Non-experiments

• Another type of non-experimental design is called a case study

• case studies are scientific studies that foucs on a single subject

• the main problem with case studies is their poor generalizability, or the extent to which their results tells us something about the general population


Non-experiments

• A Key Point: Quasi-experiments and case studies can both make valuable scientific contributions, particularly when they are used to complement each other and experiments (e.g., all three have contributed much to our understanding of the relation between alcohol consumption and brain damage)


Pure and Applied Research

• Pure research is motivated primarily by the curiosity of the researcher; it is motivated by the desire to find out how things work; it focuses on establishing building blocks or basic concepts that may provide information salient to many problems


Pure and Applied Research

• Applied research is motivated by an attempt to directly use the building blocks of basic research to answer specific questions; human and animal problems are specifically addressed


Conclusions

• biopsychologists study the biology of behavior in a variety of ways; the strength of biopsychology as a science is attributable to this diversity; its diversity also makes biopsychology an exciting and challenging field to study

(break)


The Six Divisions of Biopsychology


The 6 Divisions of Biopsychology

• Physiological Psychology

• Psychopharmacology

• Neuropsychology

• Psychophysiology

• Cognitive Neuroscience

• Comparative Psychology


Physiological Psychology

• focuses on the direct manipulation of the nervous system in controlled laboratory settings (e.g., lesions, electrical stimulation, invasive recording)

• thus, subjects are usually laboratory animals

strong focus on pure research


Psychopharmacology

• similar to physiological psychology except that the nervous system is manipulated pharmacologically

• focuses on drug effects on behavior and how these changes are mediated by changes in neural activity

• many psychopharmacologists favor pure research and use drugs to reveal the nature of brain-behavior interactions; many others study applied questions (e.g., drug abuse, therapeutic drugs)


Neuropsychology

• focuses on the behavioral deficits produced in humans by brain damage, typically cortical damage

• can’t be studied in humans by experimentation; deals almost exclusively with case studies and quasiexperimental studies

• most applied; neuropsychological tests of brain-damaged patients facilitate diagnosis, treatment, and lifestyle counseling


Psychophysiology

• focuses on the relation between physiology and behavior by recording the physiological responses of human subjects

• because humans are used, all brain recording is noninvasive (i.e., from the surface of the head)

• usual measure of brain activity is the scalp electroencephalogram (EEG)

• muscle tension, eye movement, heart rate, pupil dilation, and electrical conductance of the skin are other common measures


Cognitive Neuroscience

• newest division of biopsychology• focuses on the neural bases of cognitive processes like

learning and memory, attention, and complex perceptual processes

• often employs human subjects; key methods are noninvasive, functional brain imaging techniques

• often involves collaborations between researchers with widely different backgrounds (e.g., psychology, linguistics, computer science)


Comparative Psychology

• study of evolutionary and genetic factors in behavior

• features comparative and functional approaches

• features laboratory research as well as studies of animals in their natural environments (ethology)


Converging Operations:How do Biopsychologists Work

Together?


Converging Operations

• the methods of the six divisions are not without their weaknesses; thus, biopsychological issues are rarely resolved by a single experiment or study, or by a single approach



• progress is greatest when several different approaches, each compensating for shortcomings of the others, are used to solve the same problems; this is called converging operations



• Example: Consider the relative strengths and weakness of physiological psychology and neuropsychology. Neuropsychology’s strength is that it deals with humans, but this is also its weakness because it precludes experimentation. In contrast, physiological psychology can bring the power of the experimental method and invasive neuroscientific techniques to bear on the question, but it is limited to the study of laboratory animals.



• Because the two approaches complement one another, together they can provide evidence for points of view that neither can defend individually.

• Read about the case of Jimmie G. in Section 1.5 to see the power of this approach in action


Scientific Inference:How Biopsychologists Study the

Unobservable


Scientific Inference

• science is a method of answering questions by direct observation; it is an empirical method

• however, brain activity is not directly observable (e.g., one can’t see a neuron firing or neurochemicals being released from neurons)



• This situation is no different than that in the other sciences; e.g., physicists cannot see gravity, chemists cannot see evaporation; the effects of these processes are observable but not the processes themselves



• Question: How do scientists study the unobservable by a method that is fundamentally unobservable?



• Answer: By scientific inference; scientists observe the consequences of unobservable processes and from these they infer the nature of unobservable processes


Conclusions

Biopsychology and the Nobel Prize:

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/nobel.html

Timeline of Neuroscience:

http://neurolab.jsc.nasa.gov/timeline.htm



http://neurolab.jsc.nasa.gov/timeline.htm

psychology 302: introduction to biopsychology

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