Neurophysiology and Behavior

Abstract

Chapter 2 introduced the concept of physiological causes of behavior which are classified as proximate causes because they occur immediately before behavior. Physiological psychologists study such causes; their interest is in the bodily activities that are responsible for behavior, especially activities located in the nervous system. Neurophysiologists, including physiological psychologists, attempt to answer how questions about behavior, for example, How does the brain produce appropriate behavior under certain circumstances? In an effort to understand behavior, scientific psychologists attempt to explain why it occurs in terms of general laws, such as the laws of classical and operant conditioning. Neurophysiologists, by contrast, attempt to explain how behavior occurs in terms of more elementary, physiological, processes (called reduction1) (Carlson, 1995).