Psy 387 Study Guide First Exam

The Major Issues- Chapter 1 Module 1.1 1. The Mind-Brain Relationship a. Biological Psychology is the study of physiological evolutionary and developmental mechanism of behavior and experience. b. At the microscopic level, we find two kinds of cells: the neurons and the glia i. Neurons send messages to each other and also to muscles and glands. They have changing sizes, shape and functions. ii. Glia- which are most of the time smaller than neurons have many functions but they do not convey information over great distances. c. Physiological explanation- relates a behavior to the activity of the brain and other organs d. Ontogenetic explanation- describes how a structure or behavior develops including the influence of genes, nutrition, experiences, and their interactions. e. Evolutionary explanation- reconstructs the evolutionary history of a structure or behavior f. Functional explanation- describes why a structure or behavior evolved as it did. 2. The brain and conscious experience g. Dualism – the belief that mind and body are different kinds of substance that exist independently iii. Defended by Rene Descartes iv. Rejected by most philosophers and neuroscientists h. Monism- the belief that the universe consists of only one kind of substance. v. Materialism the view that everything that exists is material or physical vi. Mentalism – the view that only the mind really exists and the physical world could not exist unless some mind were aware of it. 1. Can’t be proven vii. Identity position: mental processes and certain kinds of brain processes are the same thing, described in different terms. The universe has only one kind of substance which includes both material and mental aspects. 2. Says that mind is brain activity. Just as how fire is not a “thing” but what happens to something viii.