The Importance of Biology in the Study of Psychology

Ashley B. McVey

Cecil College

Abstract

Whether it is the study of biopsychology and other fields of psychology or neuroscience, all psychologists and scientists are trying to understand the functions of the brain. The body and mind connection and how it reacts to certain behaviors or illnesses. Most all psychological functioning can be reduced to underlying brain processes. This should serve as reason alone as to why biology plays an important part in the study of psychology. Psychological factors play a role in whether a person develops a mental illness and in how well they recover from a mental illness, yet biological and genetic risk factors, or predispositions, are
Thanks to psychobiology and neuropsychology, there is a wealth of information available on mental illness such Parkinson's disease. Parkinson’s disease is a disease characterized by its motor symptoms as well as its neuropsychiatric and speech problems. The disease is a degenerative disorder affecting the central nervous system. The motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease result from the death of dopamine generating cells in the pars compacta region of the substantia nigra, which is a component in the part of the brain known as the basal ganglia (Obeso, Rodriguez & Benitez, 2008). There are five major pathways in the brain connecting other brain areas with the basal ganglia. These are known as the motor, oculomotor, associative, limbic, and orbitofrontal circuits. All of these are affected in Parkinson's disease, and their disruption explains many of the symptoms of the disease since the circuits are involved in a wide variety of functions including movement, attention and learning. The motor symptoms associated with Parkinson's disease are tremors, rigidity, slowness of movement and postural instability. The neuropsychiatric disturbances associated with the disease attack the cognition, which causes problems