PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY

Physiological Psychology

Physiological Psychology

Abstract

Physiological psychology is a subdivision of behavioral neuroscience (biological psychology) that studies the neural mechanisms of perception and behavior through direct manipulation of the brains of nonhuman animal subjects in controlled experiments.[1] Unlike other subdivisions within biological psychology, the main focus of physiological psychological research is the development of theories that explain brain-behavior relationships rather than the development of research that has translational value. It is sometimes alternatively called psychophysiology, and in recent years also cognitive neuroscience. Physiological psychology is the study of the physiological basis of how we think, connecting the physical operation of the brain with what we actually say and do. It is thus concerned with brain cells, brain structures and components, brain chemistry, and how all this leads to speech and action. It is also, of course, important to understand how we take in information from our five senses.

Introduction

Physiological psychology considers the working os the physical brain and the sorts of behaviors each area of the brain controls. Behavioral psychology analyzes ways in which human beings think and learn and how learning is conditioned. Cognitive psychology is a field of the behavioral sciences analyzing schema, or basic units of knowledge from past experience. Each of these approaches involves a study of human behavior, but each identifies the source of that behavior in a different way, as research using each approach shows.

Discussion

Physiological psychology has studied the split-brain hypothesis under which the two halves of the brain perform different functions. Gazzaniga (1967) set out to test what would happen if the two halves of the brain were no longer able to communicate, and he did so by testing visual abilities, tactile stimulation, and auditory abilities for patents who had undergone racial brain surgery. The independent variable was the brain surgery. The dependent variables were changes in sensory abilities. The experimental group had brain surgery, and the control group was the general population without brain surgery. The findings supported the idea that there are two different brains in each person's head, each with different complex abilities. The findings have far-reaching implications for further research and for the treatment of various problems.

Yet, it is also true that this produced a great deal of uncertainty simply because the scientific approach always holds out the possibility of being wrong, something that tradition does not. The scientific methods yields knowledge that is accepted until it is challenged by new evidence, and even as the general public may accept science as being real and true on its face, underlying that is a feeling of immanent change. The emergence of psychology as a discipline, however, did throw doubt on our thought processes and behaviors, for underlying Freudian theory as the idea that our behavior derives from forces of which we are not conscious and over which we normally have no direct control. The new psychology emerged in the 1890s, with men like Dewey pressing for the departure from the practice of analyzing one's thoughts and feelings to the use of the experimental ...