Biological Psychology Case Study

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1. Unlike other psychology fields, biological psychology usually deal with biological functions of human brain. It tends to study how different areas of brain influence human behavior and how neurons associate with one-another. Social and cognitive psychologists mainly study the human behavior through social or interpersonal aspects, which the research methods in these fields usually correlate with observation and analysis, such as experimental research and survey research. However, the research methods in biological psychology are tend to be more scientific with numerous laboratory examinations than other psychology fields. Due to one of the central purposes of biological psychology is to understand human behavior in biological perspectives, …show more content…

In the video "Powerful Stoke of Insight," Dr. Taylor share a personal story of how she experienced when she had a stoke years ago. She vividly illustrated the distinct functions of left hemisphere and right hemisphere. Since her stoke occurred in the left hemisphere, she had a hard time to process language during the tragic event happened. She was paralysis and could not understand any of the word from 911 telephone operator when she finally reached the phone. According to Dr. Taylor, "Our right human hemisphere is all about this present moment, [and] our left hemisphere thinks linearly and methodically." Due to the reason that her stoke damaged her left hemisphere, she could not think logically at the moment. This presentation thoroughly explain the concept of lateralization in biological psychology research method. I find it very interesting because I never learn that each hemisphere do in charge of different functions that affecting our …show more content…

The limitations to research in biological psychology can be related to the research ethics and sample size. Due to the fact that biological psychology is manly study human brain, scientists often need to find an actual human brain or perform brain stimulation to patients who are suffer from certain psychological disorder. However, cracking deceased people up can be disrespectful to the death and perform brain stimulation on patients can be risky to the patients. Even if the scientists are able to get consent for cracking a deceased person, it can be hard to find a perfectly normal brain. According to Dr. Jones in the speech "A Map of the Brain," a normal human brain for lab technicians to study "needs to be between the ages of 20 to 60 that died a somewhat natural death with no injury to the brain, no history of psychiatric disease, no drugs on board." In order to create accurate data, the brain must be "normal." This means the brain must came from a healthy, productive person who has no history of psychological disorders or drug used in order to construct precise reports. Also, since not much people would willing to volunteer for the study, the sample size can be pretty small. Without a large enough sample size, the data can be limited, which the research would be

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