The Understanding of Behavior and the Brain

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The Understanding of Behavior and the Brain

The trend of neurobiology and physiology predicting and causing behavioris not a new fact. So many illnesses and diseases are now attributed to biological mechanisms. A recent article in Newsweek comments on how those in the field of psychology and neuroscience are beginning to stress the fact that certain brain mechanisms account for mental illnesses and particular behaviors. Doctors seem to blame their patients peculiarities on a biologically based mental illness, rather then seeing them as individual responses to lifes circumstances (Begley 1998). It then becomes more common to prescribe drugs to alleviate the symptoms rather than understanding the behavior. Two recent developments have helped to strengthen the association of biology causing behavior. The first is the technology of brain imaging (MRI, CT, and PET scans) which search through the structures and the activity of the brain and find real physiological correlations with behaviors. The second is genetics. In recent years, researchers have found genes that seem to increase the risk of particular mental illnesses.

Does the brain influence behavior? This class is titled Neurobiology and Behavior. Another textbook for my Behavioral Neuroscience class was titled Physiology of Behavior and another book I have is titled Biological Psychology. One can observe that in both of these titles, the biology related term is first, followed by the word behavior. It is not surprising that many think that the first term always causes the other, and not the opposite. Being a psychology major, I tend to think that behavior comes first in a lot of examples. I would like to think that in many cases behavior causes biology. In class many e...

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...se to Overwhelming Stress in Children." In E. James Anthony and Colette Chiland, (Eds.), The Child In His Family, Vol 8. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1988.

2)Begley, Sharon. "Is Everybody Crazy?" Newsweek. January 26, 1998, 50-56.

3)Carlson, Neil R. Physiology of Behavior. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1994.

4)Goleman, Daniel. Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam Books, 1995.

5)This paper reflects the research and thoughts of a student at the time the paper was written for a course at Bryn Mawr College. Like other materials on Serendip, it is not intended to be "authoritative" but rather to help others further develop their own explorations. Web links were active as of the time the paper was posted but are not updated.

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