1a. Biopsychology As Neuroscience

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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
• 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
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)
How Do Biopsychologists Conduct Their
Work?
• LO 1.13 Explain how converging operations has contributed to the
study
• of Korsakoff’s syndrome.
• LO 1.14 Explain scientific inference with reference to research on eye
• movement and the visual perception of motion.
Converging Operations
• 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
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.
• the two approaches complement one another, together they can
provide evidence for points of view that neither can defend
individually.
Scientific Inference:
How Biopsychologists Study the Unobservable
• 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
• By scientific inference; scientists observe the consequences of
unobservable processes and from these they infer the nature of
unobservable processes
Scientific Inference
• a biopsychologist carefully gathers relevant measures of behavior and
neural activity from which to infer the nature of the neural processes
that regulate behavior.
Test diri anda:
1. Jelaskan dalam 100-150 kata, pengertian Plastisitas dari otak
(Neuroplasticity).
2. Jelaskan bagaimana dapat memahami bahwa gangguan jiwa seperti
depresi adalah dipengaruhi oleh factor biologisnya. (dalam 200-250
kata)
Berikan penjelasan sebanyak 50-150 kata mengenai:

1. Synaps.
2. Neurotransmitter.
3. Limbic system/ Basal Ganglia

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