Table of Content

1. Biopsychology As a Neuroscience: What Is Biopsychology, Anyway?
2. Evolution, Genetics, and Experience: Thinking About the Biology of Behavior.
3. The Anatomy of the Nervous System: The Systems, Structures, and Cells That Make Up Your Nervous System.
4. Neural Conduction and Synaptic Transmission: How Neurons Send and Receive Signals.
5. The Research Methods of Biopsychology: Understanding What Biopsychologists Do.
6. The Visual System: From Your Eyes to Your Cortex.
7. Mechanisms of Perception, Conscious Awareness, and Attention: How You Know the World.
8. The Sensorimotor System: How You Do What You Do.
9. Development of the Nervous System: From Fertilized Egg to You.
10. Brain Damage and Neuroplasticity: Can the Brain Recover from Damage?
11. Learning, Memory, and Amnesia: How Your Brain Stores Information.
12. Hunger, Eating, and Health: Why Do Many People Eat Too Much?
13. Hormones and Sex: Whats Wrong with the Mamawawa?
14. Sleep, Dreaming, and Circadian Rhythms: How Much Do You Need to Sleep?
15. Drug Addiction and the Brains Reward Circuits: Chemicals That Harm with Pleasure.
16. Lateralization, Language, and the Split Brain: The Left Brain and Right Brain of Language.
17. Biopsychology of Emotion, Stress, and Health: Fear, the Dark Side of Emotion.
18. Biopsychology of Psychiatric Disorders: The Brain Unhinged.

Salient Features

• Emphasizes four themes—“Thinking about Biopsychology,” “Clinical Implications,” “The Evolutionary Perspective,” and “Cognitive Neuroscience”—that are integral to each chapter and that are highlighted throughout by marginal icons. The themes are summarized at the end of each chapter in a “Themes Revisited” section that neatly provides some context for the topics discussed.
• Places a strong emphasis on behavior. Social issues are presented in a fashion that makes them relevant to the students; sex, hunger, sleep, and drug addiction are topics that are presented in a balanced, and often humorous, manner.
• Embraces diversity, stressing that the success of biopsychological research often results from the convergence of its diverse approaches.
• Explores both human and non-human research, as well as both pure and applied research.
• Provides self-test questions so that a student can assess his or her knowledge before proceeding. Fill-in-the-blank “Scan Your Brain” questions, located after major sections in each chapter, and “Think About It” critical thinking questions, located at the end of every chapter, allow students to test their knowledge of concepts learned.
• Effectively stimulates interest, illustrates key concepts, and emphasizes clinical applications with numerous case studies woven through the text.