Neurobiology is a theory that deals with the brain and your nerves. It determines if you are a left or right brain person. One of the theorists is named Roger Sperry. He was a very big neurobiologist. A disease that deals with this theory is ADD/ADHD. Neurophysiology is the study of the brains behavior. Personality affects how a person will behave in certain situations. Human’s attitudes are determined by their environments, personal preferences and dislikes all reflex their everyday actions. Personality is 50%-70% hereditary and that home environment has little impact on child development. Motivated behavior; extraverts demonstrate an increased sensitivity to reward signals. There are three criterions necessary to establish the neurobiological basis of such a personality: a) define the network of neural structures associated with the trait, b) explain how individual differences occur within the functioning of that network and c) identify the sources of individual differences. Neurobiology investigates these questions with a reductionism approach, examining chemical release at synapses and correlating such activity with behavior. Personality research has a long history in the field of psychology. Only in the last forty years, however, have scientists begun to look for biological explanations. Is it possible that eventually neurobiology will be able to explain personality on the same level as motor responses or our sense of hearing? Still, the chemical basis of personality gives us great insight into how and why we behave as we do. It can help explain why different people react differently to similar situations. Perhaps most importantly, it offers the potential to alter such behavior, from treating mild cases of anxiety to severe personality disorders. Roger Sperry is one of the big Neurobiologists in the 1950’s. Sperry studied the relationship of the right and left hemispheres of the brain. In one of his experiments he flashed the word “Fork” in front of the patient. If the patient was asked to say the word he could not but if asked to right the word he would start to right the word “Fork”. This happed when the two brain hemispheres were disconnected from each other. At an another experiment he placed a toothbrush in the patients left hand and blind folded the patient and was asked to identify it they could not do it. But if placed in the right hand the patient would know right away what it was. That is just one of the types of study he did in his time.
Nowadays, it is widely known that the right and left hemisphere have different functions. The two hemispheres are equally important in a daily life basis. Nevertheless, in the 1960’s this was not common knowledge. Even though today the importance of the brain hemispheres is common knowledge, people don’t usually know to whom attribute this findings. One of the people who contributed to form a more defined picture about the brain hemispheres and their respective functions was Roger Wolcott Sperry, with the split brain research. Roger Sperry did more contributions than the split brain research, but this is his most important and revolutionary research in the psychological field. Thanks to the split brain research, Sperry proved that the two hemispheres of the brain are important, they work together and whatever side of the brain is more capable of doing the task is the hemisphere that takes the lead.
In class we have frequently discussed the I-function and how it relates to the body and the brain. Is the I-function a separate soul? Is it simply an extension of our DNA and genes? In addition, we have fretted over the I-function and its relationship to our behavior or personality. Where exactly the I-function is, we have also wondered. In this paper I will explore personality, the I-function and their relationship to genes and chemical changes that take place within the body. I will mainly look at how neurotransmitters affect overall happiness in an individual. How these chemicals are regulated by genes and by the environment, will also be questioned. Overall I will look at what makes us who we are. Are we simply programmed for life by our genes or do they even matter at all?
A layman would define personality as an individual’s characteristics in terms of how they think and behave. Many theorists, however, interprets personality differently resulting in various personality theories. Personality is determined by traits which are behaviours displayed by a person in most given situations. How a person reacts to common circumstances may also be used to foresee future behaviours. Traits are then categorized into types that allow easier comparisons to be made between each individual’s attributes. The focus of this paper would be on the biological aspects of personality whereby traits are thought to be inheritable through genetics and associated with the central nervous system. Behavioural genetics are research that makes use of results from studies done on family, twins and adoptions. The findings of how both genes and environment influences personality from the studies will be discussed. Some researchers found possible issues with the representativeness of such studies. The outline of Eysenck’s biological model of personality and arousal, Gray’s BAS/BIS theory and Cloninger’s biological model of personality will further explain the biological effect on personality.
Current research shows that mental events cause physical events, and scientists believe examining single nerves is the key to understanding how the brain works as a complete unit. Understanding the brain at the nerve cell level will allow scientists to understand how human consciousness works (Blakeslee, 1992). Furthermore, the brain's thalamus is identified as the possible sensory connector because it fires 40 impulses per second that sweep through the entire brain (Blakeslee, 1995a). These findings are a serious implication to Dualism because it states the mind is not physical. If the mind is not physical, it cannot affect the physical body, so the Dualist theory of two-sided interactions between the body and mind are false. The aforementioned argument is supported by many other scientific facts and objections against Dualism.
One of the principles of the biological level of analysis is that behavior is a result of various complex processes. Human behavior is likely to change due to self-related, environmental, and social influences. Nuerons in our body can often be called the building blocks to behavior. Therefore, neurotransmission, the method in which the neurons send messages that creates a synapse, essentially creates the behavior. Different neurotransmitters hold different effects to human behavior like serotonin with the effect of arousal/sleep and dopamine with the effect of pleasure. This exhibits how neurotransmission has an effect on human behavior.
German psychologist Hans Eysenck’s Model of Nervous System Temperament links temperament traits, specifically introversion and extraversion to the Central Nervous System. Introverted people are typically quiet, reserved, and timid whereas extraverts are active, sociable, and outgoing (151). According to Eysenck, introverts have high levels of brain arousal, which is controlled by the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS). Therefore, introverts do not need to seek external arousal leading them to be more reserved. Contrastingly, he argues that extraverts have lower levels of brain arousal and therefore are more sensation seeking in order to make up for it. In this paper, I will aim to synthesize and summarize some of the research regarding introversion and extraversion and their link to the central nervous system and states of arousal. I will synthesize this information to support the idea that while introversion and extraversion are on some level linked to states of arousal, Eysenck’s arousal hypothesis is not alone sufficient to explain the biological differences between introverted and extraverted individuals and their behaviors as such.
The biological approach emphasizes physical and biological bases of behaviour. It looks at how brain functions influence different behaviours and personality. The study of nervous system has played a major role in the development of biological approach to psychology. On the other hand, the psychoanalytic approach explains personality, motivation and psychological disorders by focusing on the influence of early childhood experiences, unconscious motives and conflicts. This essay attempts to explain biological and psychoanalytic approaches to psychology with focus on their core assumptions, key features, similarities and differences.
The biological approach to psychology makes the assumption that all behaviours are associated with changes in the brain function and that psychopathology will be caused by a disorder within the brain, neuroanatomy. Many biological psychologists tend to assume that most behaviours, normal and disordered, involve an inherited component from the biological parents. In theory this suggests that all behaviours can be related to changes in brain activity.
Neuroplasticity Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to remap itself in response to experience. The theory was first proposed by Psychologist William James who stated “Organic matter, especially nervous tissue, seems endowed with a very extraordinary degree of plasticity". Simply put, the brain has the ability to change. He used the word plasticity to identify the degree of difficulty involved in the process of change. He defined plasticity as ".the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once" (James, 1890).
My love for neuroscience began long before my passion for neuroscience research. My favorite aspect of psychology since my initial encounter in Advanced Placement Psychology in high school is the nervous system and brain function in relation to behavior. It is fascinating how something so small serves such an extremely important and vital role in our body and behavior. The intriguing details of the brain fuel my desire to learn more about its functions. After completing the Biological Basis of Behavior and Neural System Courses at the University of Maryland, my knowledge as well as curiosity for the brain heightened.
Certain changes to the brain that are experienced more within young brains, tend to be more adaptive and responsive to situations that an older brain tends to be more maladaptive to. Neuroplasticity happens most in the first years of life and decreases as the human body ages. Children are more likely to recover at faster rates from head injuries than adults. It has been shown that they can recover their brain functions faster due to neuroplasticity. There are four types of neuroplasticity in children; adaptive, excessive, plasticity, and adaptive. Plasticity makes the brain virtually vulnerable to injury. Adaptive neuroplasticity is the changes that allow children to have special skills and to adapt to them. Impaired neuroplasticity occurs when genetic disorders change molecular pathways. Excessive neuroplasticity can lead to disabilities and seizures because the brain is not meant to change too often. [4] As the human body ages, it has been found that there is more of a maladaptive function which negatively impacts the brain and the body.[5] Margaret Kennard came up with a principle called the Kennard principle. This principle states that the younger the brain is, the more likely it is that it will be able to recover from trauma.[6] The Kennard Principle also can be argued against because of the fact that preterm infants have the probability of possessing numerous mental
The human body is divided into many different parts called organs. All of the parts are controlled by an organ called the brain, which is located in the head. The brain weighs about 2. 75 pounds, and has a whitish-pink appearance. The brain is made up of many cells, and is the control centre of the body. The brain flashes messages out to all the other parts of the body.
Personality is the study of an individual’s unique and relatively stable patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving over time and across situations and it is what distinguishes one individual from another. In the past changes in personality were thought to have only occurred in the developmental stages of childhood and solidifies in adolescence. After the teenage years it was thought to be set like plaster or the change seen to be inconsequential or absent( Srivastava, John, Gosling, and Potter, 2003). However, recent studies have suggested that changes in personality traits continue to occur throughout an individual’s lifespan due to multiple reasons.
Our personalities are what distinguish us from each other beyond our appearance; without them, we would all behave and react in the same way. Personality is the reason we are outgoing or introverted, persistent or blaze, and anxious or calm. We each have different levels of these competing characteristics that make us unique. But why are personalities so varied? Personality is determined by an array of factors from genetic and biological to the personal experiences and decisions we have faced from the day we are born. The complexity of our personalities cannot be simply explained, and for this reason there exists many different theories of how it’s developed and personality is still deeply under study. I went into this subject with an open-mind
Personality is the expression of a person’s traits according to ones feelings, mentality and behavior. It involves understanding individuals’ traits such as withdrawal and willpower and how various parts of an individual link together to form personality. Personality expresses itself from within an individual and is comparatively regular throughout in an individual’s life. Different people have different personalities dependent on factors such as environment and genetic composition. Our personality is dependent on the success or failure of our development in the eight stages of life. This is proposed by Erik Erikson. Success in the development stages lead to virtues while the failure leads to malignancies.