PSY290 - Physiological Psychology: Exploring Research Methods & Ethics

This report delves into the realm of physiological psychology, defining it as the scientific study of behavior and the mind, encompassing both conscious and unconscious processes. It highlights the role of psychologists in understanding mental functions in relation to social and individual behavior, with a focus on exploring psychological and biological processes. A significant portion of the report is dedicated to the methods employed in physiological psychology, including stereotaxic surgery, MRI techniques, PET scans, and CT scans, detailing their applications in understanding brain structure and function. It also addresses the importance and limitations of using animals in neuroscience research, acknowledging the ethical considerations and differences between animal and human physiology. This document provides a comprehensive overview of the tools and challenges in physiological psychology research. Desklib offers a platform to explore similar solved assignments and past papers.

RUNNING HEADER; Psychology
Psychology
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RUNNING HEADER; Psychology
Psychology
Introduction
Psychology is said to be science which involves behavior and the mind. This includes
conscious and unconscious phenomena and also feelings and thoughts. Psychology academic
discipline of immerse scope and interests diverse, when taken together they give an
understanding of the emergent properties of the brain.in this field of psychology, the researcher
is called the psychologist and it is classified into the various division which includes: social,
behavior or cognitive scientist. The psychologist tries to comprehend the role of mental function
in social and individual behavior while trying to explore both psychological and biological
processes. The psychological behavior explore includes attention, emotions, perception,
cognition, motivation, intelligence, brain functioning and personality (Seligman et al 2014).
Physiological psychology
Physiological psychology is said to be the subdivision of behavioral neuroscience that
helped in studying the mechanism of perception in neural using direct manipulation of the
animals in a well-controlled experiment. This field of psychology uses an empirical –practical
approach when trying to study mind and character of the human. (Baumeister et al 2010).Many
scientists in this sector believe that the brain is phenomena that stems from the nervous. By
acquiring knowledge on the mechanism of nervous system psychologist manage to discover a lot
of truths on the human behavior. Unlike other methods of psychology within biological
psychology, the major aim objective of this method is to derive the theories relating to human
brain-behavior (Smith J. A. 2015).
Methods employed in psychology
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RUNNING HEADER; Psychology
This method of psychology implements different methods in understanding the structure
and functioning of the human brain for finding out physiological causes of human behavior-
motivation (Smith,2015). Nowadays several methods are employed in strengthening the
connection between biological and behavior concentrating on two crucial factors which involve
the technology of brains such as MRI, CT, and PET scans.
The major methods used in comprehending the concepts of physiological psychology are as
follows;
Stereotaxic surgery. This a method where the surgery is executed by giving definition of three
crucial area of the brain. The main aim of this method is to either placing the electrodes for
recording or to cause destruction of a particular region of the brain (Smith,2015).
MRI techniques. This method of magnetic resonance imaging is used to in receiving
information from inside of an organism by way of displaying pathological changes in living
cells.
PET scan. Positron emission tomography method is used in clinical setting to help understand
the physiological images taken in order to detect the radiation as an effect of proton emission
(Seligman et al,2014).
CT scan. Computed tomography /computed axial tomography is the physiological method which
involves images taking which are used in clinical practices by use of tomography whereby digital
geometry process is used to produce three-dimensional images. This method is commonly
referred as cerebrovascular accidents and intracranial hemorrhage (Hartmann & Rapaport,2015).
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RUNNING HEADER; Psychology
Importance’s of using animals in neuroscience research
Some of the physiological methods used in this research are harmful hence applying them
to human being may lead to physical destruction of human brain. Human beings and animals
shares the same ancestors hence taking animals as a research samples it sometimes looks easy to
give relationship between the two. Some methods involve radiation and to avoid destruction of
human tissues animal are therefore preferred (Seligman et al,2014).
Limitations
Using animals in psychological research sometimes it appears difficult to relate the
results achieved to the human being behavior. For example, human bodies (minds) work
differently from those of the animals (Baumeister et al,2010). Some organs in animals and
human being work differently is some aspects specifically in cortical volume between species.
Such limitation may result to improper comprehending of the human brain and behavior. The
findings from the animal studies is mostly a concern in psychology since human behavior are
more advanced, for example fiction execution.
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RUNNING HEADER; Psychology
References
Baumeister, R. F., & Finkel, E. J. (Eds.). (2010). Advanced social psychology: The state
of the science. OUP USA.
Smith, J. A. (Ed.). (2015). Qualitative psychology: A practical guide to research
methods. Sage.
Seligman, M. E., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). Positive psychology: An introduction.
In Flow and the foundations of positive psychology (pp. 279-298). Springer Netherlands.
Hartmann, H., & Rapaport, D. T. (2015). Ego psychology and the problem of adaptation.
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