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Physiological Psychology
It is a young science.
1930s
It wasn’t until ______ that researchers first began to see how the brain communicates with and controls various muscles and organs throughout the body.
1950s
In _____________, researches began to understand how the brain processes external stimuli into the sensory experiences we know as sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste.
1.) attitudes having to do with behavior itself had to change
2.) methods had to emerge that would enable scientists to study the workings of the brain
Before physiological psychology gain a foothold as a genuine science, two things had to happen.
Plato
He was intensely interested in the mind, but he viewed the world in dualistic terms.
He saw the physical world – everything that could be seen, touched, or self - as an entity separated from the “mind,” and he contended that the mind, because of its “spiritual” nature, not only was superior to the physical body but also beyond understanding.
In his view, no amount of analysis or reasoning could reveal how the mind works.
Monism
The laws that govern the workings of the mind are no different from the laws that govern physical events — this philosophical view was known as _________.
Athenian Empire
Pneuma Theory
The first real ‘theory” how the mind operates, intially advanced during the era of the __________.
pneuma
The Pneuma Theory is based on the belief that the mind was controlled by invisible spirits known as ____________.
Hippocrates
5th century B.C. Greek physician _________ theorized that the brain was the controlling mechanism of all mental and emotional faculties.
Galen
He severed the nerves leading to a pig’s larynx and correctly offered the pig’s inability to vocalize as a proof of a relationship between the nervous system and behavior.
He explaind that the function of the brain was to refine the pneuma and redirect it through the nervous to the muscles.
1790, Luigi Galvani, animal electricity
In _____, Italian physician and physicist ____ discovered the electric current applied to a frog’s nerves produced muscle movement, and he correctly theorized that nerves can conduct electricity.
He identified this nature of the pneuma, a unique substance called __________ – that moves from nerve to muscle in the form of a fluid.
19th century
Until when did the pneuma persist?
Rene Descartes
Father of Physiological Psychology
Though deeply religious, he questioned the long-accepted notion that human fate is subject to the whim of invisible and unknowable forces.
He argued that humans can become “masters and possessors of nature.”
He was neither a physiologist nor a psychologist. He was a 17th century philosopher and mathematician.
He contend that the search for true knowledge begins with the willingness to doubt everything that has been presented as “truth.”
John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume
They were responsible for taking the study of the mind-body relations out of the realm of the metaphysics and the religious and into the mainstream of experimental scientific inquiry.
They agreed with Descartes that the search for true knowledge begins with the willingness to doubt everything in the past that has been presented, but they added another ingredient to the search for knowledge: observation.
Behaviorism
Influenced by Darwinian Theory of Evolution, where the idea of physiological and behavioral link between lower animals and humans helped created the foundation of experimental psychology.
John B. Watson
Who founded Behaviorism? He wanted to bring psychology back to a focus on scientific inquiry.
John B. Watson
He asserts that people can only be understood by focusing of the observable behavior; they are like machines controlled by external forces.
(1) Improvement in the magnifying power of the microscope, which occured around 1830
(2) Chemical technique known as staining which enable neuroanatomists to see certain features of nerve cells that, even under the microscope, were not otherwise visible
Two breakthroughs marked the transition from the idea that nerves were nothing more than tubes to the view that holds true today.
electron microscope
With the invention of the ___________ and its extraordinary magnifying powers, Sherrington’s suspiscious proved correct and the hypothetical synapse became a reality.
