- Biopsychology plays a crucial role in enhancing neuroscientific research in a diverse manner: The two fields may appear to be at odds since neuroscience focuses on physical qualities and psychology on their mental equivalents. Neuroscience, on the other hand, has a place in psychology. Psychology and neuroscience, far from being entirely unconnected fields, may complement each other in various ways. The two areas can work together to address issues about cognition and behavior and brain development, neuropsychopharmacology, and plasticity (Lewkowicz, 2011). Thanks to neuroscience, scientists now have the opportunity to examine the neurological processes that determine conduct in new, sophisticated ways, allowing experts to judge cognitively and effectively. Neuroscience has made important contributions towards the following factors that influence mental health and behaviour when it comes to explaining how psychology and neuroscience work together to produce good results.
The following are various disciplines studied under neuroscience:
- Cognitive neuroscience. Study of the psychological functions produced in biology. The connection between brain circuitry and mental processes is examined in cognitive neuroscience.
- Behavioral neuroscience. Behavioral neurosciences — often known as biopsychology — focus on the component processes of the brain.
- Cellular neuroscience. The field of cellular neuroscience studies how the brain grows and evolves as it responds to new experiences.
- The neural Systems. The study of brain systems and circuits emphasizes the complexities of how neural circuits are generated and how they provide functions such as reflexes, memory, and emotional reactions.
- Nature-Nature Dichotomy
The word “Tabula Rasa” was employed by John Locke to represent the notion that in 1690 people learn all or almost all of their behavioral characteristics via “nurture.” In much of the 20th century, a white psychological approach was generally accepted in human cognitive science, which claimed that human behavioral traits emerge almost exclusively from environmental circumstances. The strife between the blank-slate rejection of heritage and the ecological and heritage-related perspective has been repeatedly articulated as a struggle against nature and nurture.
- A coordinating and integrating mechanism that aids a vertebrate organism’s adaptability to its surroundings. The nervous system comprises assemblages of cells that are specialized by their structure and function to operate as the body’s main coordinating organ. The capacity to detect the environment, move and react to stimuli, and produce and regulate all of the organism’s activity is based on nervous tissue. When an external stimulation activates specific structures (receptors) in an organism, the organism responds.
- Nerves transmit excitations to effectors, which operate to adjust the organism to changing environmental conditions. The brain, brain stem, backbone, cranial and lateral nerves, and ganglia compose the neurological regime for the vertebrates.
The chemicals that attach to particular receptors and activate a cell function are called agonists (Butler & Hodos, 2005). An agonist produces a specific physiological reaction in the cell. It might be artificial or natural. A manufactured agonist is so structurally close to the natural agonist of the receptor that it can affect the recipient equally.
Many medicines are developed to imitate natural agonists to attach to their receptors and produce the same – or even more significant – response. Just like the key in the lock (the recipient), an agonist is turning it into the door. The natural agonist is the key; however additional keys can be designed.
Conversely, an adversary is like a necessary fitting well in the lock using the lock and key analogy but does not have the appropriate way to turn the lock. If you place the key (anthropic) in the lock, it cannot go into the same certainty with the proper key (agonist). The agonist’s activities are therefore inhibited by the antagonist’s presence in the receiver molecule. Let us once again consider morphine as an opiate receptor agonist. The opioid-receptor antagonist Naloxone can counteract these effects when somebody has a life-threatening morphine excess.
References
Butler, A. B., & Hodos, W. (2005). Comparative vertebrate neuroanatomy: evolution and adaptation. John Wiley & Sons.
Lewkowicz, D. J. (2011). The biological implausibility of the nature–nurture dichotomy and what it means for the study of infancy. Infancy, 16(4), 331-367.
