The 3 Differences Between Neuropsychology And Psychobiology
Psychology is a profession, an academic discipline and a science that is responsible for the analysis and study of mental processes in human beings. When thinking about this branch of knowledge and clinical diagnosis, most people usually turn to the figure of the psychologist and the psychiatrist, two professions well established in the global panorama of mental health.
Even so, with the advancement of science, distinctions between different branches become more and more necessary. For example, did you know that terms such as neuropsychology, psychobiology, neurobiology or behavioral neurology are widely related to the world of human behavior?
That’s right, knowledge has no borders, and therefore, it is increasingly necessary to specialize more to understand each process and engine that drives human behavior. Here we will see what are the differences between neuropsychology and psychobiology relatively recent terms in the world of mental health.
Differences between neuropsychology and psychobiology: from behavior to neurons
To understand the differences between both terms, it is necessary to go to the etymological roots of both words As we can see, both contain the prefixal element “psycho”, from Greek, which means “soul” or “mental activity”.
This is where the linguistic similarities end, giving us a clue that both branches have some type of relationship with the study of the human mind. In one of the terms we observe the prefixal element “neuro”, which again, in Greek, refers to the nerve or nervous system. The rest of the word in the second term, “psychobiology”, is quite self-explanatory, as it refers to biology, the science that studies living beings and their vital processes.
Thus, only with words, we can already intuit that One of the disciplines will focus on the nervous system, and the other will explain behaviors from a biological point of view, TRUE?. Now, let’s start with the differences between neuropsychology and psychobiology.
Neuropsychology is defined as a discipline and clinical specialty that converges between neurology (medical specialty of disorders of the nervous system) and psychology. In simpler words, one could say that this branch studies the effects of an injury, accident or abnormality of the central nervous system on the different cognitive processes of the human being Not everything is a question of diseases, as it also seeks knowledge of the neural bases of complex mental processes in healthy individuals.
These “complex mental processes” respond to mechanisms that humans put into practice continuously, even unconsciously. Some of them are attention, memory, language, perception, praxias (acquired motor skills), executive functions and emotions. All of these components, taken together, define us both as a species and as individuals, and condition our daily lives and the way we relate to the environment.
On the other hand, psychobiology takes a much more primal and evolutionary approach since it bases its foundations on the understanding of animal behaviors through biological processes.
From a purely psychobiological point of view, behavior is nothing more than the response that a living being gives to a stimulus from the environment that affects it. Like the rest of the activities carried out by animals, behavior would respond to an adaptive function, a mere reflection of the adaptation of the species to the environment in which it is found, in order to maximize your chances of survival and leave their genetic mark on future generations. Let’s delve deeper into this concept.
2. What is behavior and how is it modulated?
Neuropsychology seeks, like any discipline related to psychology, the understanding of human behavior, but especially, its relationship with the functioning of the brain.
If we take into account that the brain is a highly plastic organ, we can postulate that it will undergo changes in its activity and structure throughout the individual’s life (especially in the first years of development), which will give rise to behavioral variations.
These statements do not move in a merely speculative field, since various studies have shown that, for example, experience modifies the human brain continually strengthens or weakens the synapses that connect neurons The brain, as we see, is the central point and axis of this discipline. Some of the dogmas of neuropsychology are the following:
As we can see, behavior, according to neuropsychology, cannot be understood without the brain and its possible modifications, both due to alterations and pathologies and due to natural processes, such as learning.
Psychobiology, on the other hand, does not seem to have a specific interest in the human brain. For example, the evolutionary branch of it tries to understand behavior as a product of natural selection. Natural selection, postulated by Darwin, tells us that individuals with characteristics that promote their survival are positively selected, since they will be the ones that reproduce and give rise to offspring. Over time, populations will inherit these successful characteristics since the least viable ones will remain halfway and will not have genetic representation in future generations of the species.
Therefore, behavior itself can be understood as a product of a phylogenetic history within the human species. That is, as the set of responses that, in ancient times, promoted the survival and reproductive success of our ancestors, the “evolutionary achievements.”
So that, human behavior, according to psychobiology, is not so dependent on the cerebral cortex and its components, as well as the phylogenetic history of our species, the genetic endowment of each individual and how it modulates their responses, and the environmental factors that modulate the responses contained in the genes. Complex, right?
3. The response to aggressiveness: a practical case
The differences between neuropsychology and psychobiology can be understood when we look at studies from both branches. For example, how will each of them approach the study of aggression in humans?
For example, Neuropsychology will look, first, at the structural differences in the anterior regions of the cortex that modulate violent responses. Questions such as: are cortical imbalances related to aggressive responses? What relationship does neuroanatomy have with antisocial and violent behaviors? What regions of the prefrontal cortex are related to aggressive behavior and what happens if they are modified?
Instead, psychobiology will take a completely different approach. Given the violent behavior of certain humans, will first look at the relationships of the hormones that cause these behaviors and what evolutionary meaning They have the same ones about humans and the rest of vertebrates.
In these cases, questions such as: what social agents cause changes in serotonin levels in the body of the aggressive person? What is the function of the components that promote violence and how are they expressed in animals? What is the ethological significance of this behavior? Did it maximize the survival of the beings that showed it in its time?
Conclusions
As we have seen, neuropsychology and psychobiology They are different terms, but not mutually exclusive The first is responsible for explaining behavioral variations in human beings using the brain as a central axis, especially in its morphological modifications. Psychobiology, on the other hand, is based on studying the phylogenetic inheritance of these behaviors, their hormonal mechanisms, and how these types of responses are translated in the animal world.
As complex as both branches may seem, one thing is clear: knowledge of human behaviors, both from a physiological and evolutionary point of view, is essential. The more we know about ourselves, the faster we will improve both as individuals and as a society as a whole.
