Matakuliah : L0044/Psikologi Faal
Tahun : 2009

• When Descartes first said, “I think, therefore I am,” he was opening up what would eventually become one of the biggest questions about human nature.
• How is the mind related to the body?
• Where do they intersect, and how do they interact?

Source: Sobotta Atlas der Anatomie des
Menschen Kopf, Hals, obere Extremit ät,
Band 1, 2006, Elsevier GmbH, M ünchen.

Sumber: http://images.google.co.id/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Human_brain_arachnoid.JPG&imgrefurl=http://commons.wikime
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• One of the most universal of all human characteristics is curiosity.
• In ancient times, people believed that natural phenomena were caused by animating spirits
( animism ).
• When our ancestors became more sophisticated and learned more about nature, they abandoned this approach ( animism ) in favor of physical explanations for inanimate moving objects. But they still used spirit to explain human behavior.

• From the earliest historical times, people have believed that they possess something intangible that animates them – a mind, or a soul, or a spirit.
• This belief stems from the fact that each of us is aware of his or her own existence.
• When we think or act, we feel as though something inside us is thinking or deciding to act.

We have physical bodies (muscle, sensory organs, etc..)
Nervous System plays a central role
Receiving information and controlling the movements.

But what role does the mind play?
Does it control the nervous system?
Is it physical and tangible, like the rest of the body, or is it a spirit that will always remain hidden?
This puzzle has historically been called

Two different approaches
• Dualism is belief in the dual nature of reality. Mind and body are separated; the body is made of ordinary matter, but the mind is not.
• Monism is a belief that everything in the universe consists of matter and energy and that the mind is a phenomenon produced by the working of the nervous system.

• Physiological psychologists take an empirical, practical, and monistic approach to the study of human nature.
• But we are far from understanding the working of the nervous system, so only the time will tell whether this belief is justified.
• There is no way to study nonphysical phenomena in the laboratory.
• All that we can detect with our sense organs and our laboratory instruments are manifestations of the physical world: matter and energy.

BIOPSYCHOLOGY
• Biopsychology is the scientific study of the biology of behavior.
• Psychology is the scientific study of behavior – the scientific study of all overt activities of the organim as well as all the internal processes that are presumed to underlie them (e.g., learning, memory, motivation, perception, and emotion).
• The study of the biology of behavior has a long history, but biopsychology did not develop into a major neuroscientific discipline until the 20 th century.
• Its developed the first comprehensive theory of how complex psychological phenomena, such as perception, emotions, thoughts and memories, might be produced by brain activity.
• In comparison to physic, chemistry, and biology, biopsychology is an infant.

• Biopsychology is an integrative discipline.
• Biopsychology draw together knowledge from the other neuroscientific disciplines and apply it to the study of behavior.
• A few of the disciplines of neuroscience that are particularly relevant to biopsychology:
– Neuroanatomy.
– Neurochemistry.
– Neuroendocrinology.
– Neuropathology.
– Neuropharmacology.
– Neurophysiology.

• What types of research characterize the
Biopsychology approach?
– Human and Nonhuman subjects.
– Experiments and Nonexperiments.
– Pure and Applied research.

THE SIX MAJOR DIVISION OF
BIOPSYCHOLOGY
• Physiological Psychology
– Study of the neural mechanisms of behavior by manipulating the nervous systems of nonhuman animals in controlled experiments.
• Psychopharmacology
– Study of the effects of drugs on the brain and behavior.
• Neuropsychology
– Srudy of the psychological effects of brain damage in human patients.
• Psychophysiology
– Study of the relation between physiological activity and psychological processes in human subjects by noninvasive physiological recording.
• Cognitive neuroscience
– Study of the neural mechanisms of human cognitive, largely through the use of functional brain imaging.
• Comparative psychology
– Study of the evolution, genetics, and adaptiveness of behavior, largely through the use of the comparative method.

Physiological Psychology
• Physiological Psychology is the divison of biopsychology that studies the neural mechanisms of behavior through the direct manipulation of the brain in controlled experiments-surgical and electrical methods of brain manipulation are most common. (Pinel,
2006)
• The subjects of physiological psychology research are almost always laboratory animals, because the focus on direct brain manipulation and controlled experiments precludes the use of human subject in most instances.

Psychopharmacology
• Psychopharmacology is similar to physiology psychology, except that it focuses on the manipulation of neural activity and behavior with drugs.
• The study of the effects of drugs on the brain and behavior has become so specialized that psychopharmacology is regarded as a separate discipline.
• Drugs are sometimes used by psychopharmacologist to study the basic principles of brain-behavior interaction, the purpose of many psychopharmacological experiments is to develop therapeutic drugs or to reduce drug abuse.

Neuropsychology
• Neuropsychology is the study of the psychological effects of brain damage in human patients.
• Obviously, human subjects cannot ethically be exposed to experimental treatments that endanger normal brain function.
• Consequently, neuropsychology deals almost exclusively with case studies and quasiexperimental studies of patients with brain damage resulting from disease, accident, or neurosurgery.

Psychophysiology
• Psychophysiology is the division of biopsychology that studies the relation between physiological activity and psychological processes in human subjects.
• Because the subject of psychophysiological research are human, psychophysiological recording procedures are typically noninvasive; that is, the physiological activity is recorded from the surface of the body.
• The usual measure of brain activity is the scalp electroencephalogram (EEG)
• Other common psychophysiological measures are muscle tension, eye movement, and several indicators of autonomic nervous system activity (heart rate, blood pressure, pupil dilatation, and electrical conductance of the skin).

Cognitive Neuroscience
• Cognitive neuroscience is the youngest division of biopsychology, but it is currently among the most active and exciting.
• Study the neural bases of cognitif, a term that generally refers to higher intellectual processes such as thought, memory, attention, and complex perceptual processes.
• Involves human subjects, noninvasive recording.
• The major method of cognitive neuroscience is funcional brain imaging while the subject are engaged in particular cognitive activities.

Comparative Psychology
• The division of biopsychology that deals generally with the biology of behavior, rather than specifically with the neural mechanisms of behavior.
• Compare the behavior of different species in order to understand the evolution, genetics, and adaptiveness of behavior in the laboratory; other engage in ethological research – the study of animal behavior in its natural environment.

References
• Carlson, N. R. (2007). Physiology of behavior (9 th ed.).
Boston: Pearson.
• Pinel, J. P. J. (2006). Biopsychology (6 th ed.). Boston:
Pearson.
• Putz, R., & Pabst, R. (2006). Sobotta atlas der anatomie des menschen , Band 1 (22 Auflage). Elsevier GmbH:
München.