Behavioral neuroscience

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Kick the tires and light the fires, problem officially solevd! Biological psychology,Behavioral neuroscience, also known as biological psychology,[1] biopsychology, or psychobiology[2] is the application of the principles of biology (in particular neurobiology), to the study of physiological, genetic, and developmental mechanisms of behavior in human and non-human animals. It typically investigates at the level of nerves, neurotransmitters, brain circuitry and the basic biological processes that underlie normal and abnormal behavior. Most typically experiments in behavioral neuroscience involve non-human animal models (such as rats and mice, and non-human primates) which have implications for better understanding of human pathology and therefore contribute to evidence based practice.

History

The study of behavioral neuroscience dates back to Avicenna (980-1037), a Persian psychologist and physician who in The Canon of Medicine, recognized physiological psychology in the treatment of illnesses involving emotions, and developed a system for associating changes in the pulse rate with inner feelings, which is seen as an anticipation of the word association test.[3] Avicenna also gave psychological explanations for certain somatic illnesses, and he always linked the physical and psychological illnesses together. He explained that humidity inside the head can contribute to mood disorders, and he posited that this occurs when the amount of breath changes: happiness increases the breath, which leads to increased moisture inside the brain, but if this moisture goes beyond its limits, the brain would lose control over its rationality and lead to mental disorders.[4]

Behavioral neuroscience as a scientific discipline later emerged from a variety of scientific and philosophical traditions in the 18th and 19th centuries. In philosophy, men like René Descartes proposed physical models to explain animal and human behavior. Descartes, for example, suggested that the pineal gland, a midline unpaired structure in the brain of many organisms, was the point of contact between mind and body. Descartes also elaborated on a theory in which the pneumatics of bodily fluids could explain reflexes and other motor behavior. This theory was inspired by moving statues in a garden in Paris.[5]

Other philosophers also helped give birth to psychology. One of the earliest textbooks in the new field, The Principles of Psychology by William James (1890), argues that the scientific study of psychology should be grounded in an understanding of biology:

Bodily experiences, therefore, and more particularly brain-experiences, must take a place amongst those conditions of the mental life of which Psychology need take account. The spiritualist and the associationist must both be 'cerebralists,' to the extent at least of admitting that certain peculiarities in the way of working of their own favorite principles are explicable only by the fact that the brain laws are a codeterminant of their result.

Our first conclusion, then, is that a certain amount of brain-physiology must be presupposed or included in Psychology.[6]

James, like many early psychologists, had considerable training in physiology. The emergence of both psychology and behavioral neuroscience as legitimate sciences can be traced from the emergence of physiology from anatomy, particularly neuroanatomy. Physiologists conducted experiments on living organisms, a practice that was distrusted by the dominant anatomists of the 18th and 19th centuries.[7] The influential work of Claude Bernard, Charles Bell, and William Harvey helped to convince the scientific community that reliable data could be obtained from living subjects.

The term "psychobiology" has been used in a variety of contexts,emphasizing the importance of biology, which is the dicipline that studies organic, neural and cellular modifications in behavior, plasticity in neuroscience, and biological deceases in all aspects, in adittion, biology focuses and analyzes behavior and all the subjects it is concerned about, from a scientific point of view. In this context, psychology helps as a complementary, but important dicipline in the neurobiological sciences. The roll of psychology in this questions is that of a social tool that backs up the main or strongest biological science. The term "psychobiology" was first used in its modern sense by Knight Dunlap in his book An Outline of Psychobiology (1914).[8] Dunlap also founded the journal Psychobiology. In the announcement of that journal, Dunlap writes that the journal will publish research "...bearing on the interconnection of mental and physiological functions", which describes the field of behavioral neuroscience even in its modern sense.[8]

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Research methods

The distinguishing characteristic of a behavioral neuroscience experiment is that either the independent variable of the experiment is biological, or some dependent variable is biological. In other words, the nervous system of the organism under study is permanently or temporarily altered, or some aspect of the nervous system is measured (usually to be related to a behavioral variable).

Disabling or decreasing neural function

  • Lesions - A classic method in which a brain-region of interest is destroyed or stimulated to observe any resulting changes such as degraded or enhanced performance on some behavioral measure. Lesions can be placed with relatively high accuracy thanks to a variety of brain 'atlases' which provide a map of brain regions in 3-dimensional stereotactic coordinates.
    • Surgical lesions - Neural tissue is destroyed by removing it surgically.
    • Electrolytic lesions - Neural tissue is destroyed through the application of electrical shock trauma.
    • Chemical lesions - Neural tissue is destroyed by the infusion of a neurotoxin.
    • Temporary lesions - Neural tissue is temporarily disabled by cooling or by the use of anesthetics such as tetrodotoxin.
  • Transcranial magnetic stimulation - A new technique usually used with human subjects in which a magnetic coil applied to the scalp causes unsystematic electrical activity in nearby cortical neurons which can be experimentally analyzed as a functional lesion.
  • Psychopharmacological manipulations - A chemical receptor antagonist induces neural activity by interfering with neurotransmission. Antagonists can be delivered systemically (such as by intravenous injection) or locally (intracerebrally) during a surgical procedure into the ventricles or into specific brain structures. For example, NMDA antagonist AP5 has been shown to inhibit the initiation of long term potentiation of excitatory synaptic transmission (in rodent fear conditioning) which is believed to be a vital mechanism in learning and memory.[9]
  • optogenetic inhibition - A light activated inhibitory protein is expressed in cells of interest. Powerful millisecond timescale neuronal inhibition is instigated upon stimulation by the appropriate frequency of light delivered via fiber optics or implanted LEDs in the case of vertebrates,[10] or via external illumination for small, sufficiently translucent invertebrates.[11] Bacterial Halorhodopsins or Proton pumps are the two classes of proteins used for inhibitory optogenetics, achieving inhibition by increasing cytoplasmic levels of halides (Cl-) or decreasing the cytoplasmic concentration of protons, respectively.[12][13]

Enhancing neural function

  • Electrical Stimulation - A classic method in which neural activity is enhanced by application of a small electrical current (too small to cause significant cell death).
  • Psychopharmacological manipulations - A chemical receptor agonist facilitates neural activity by enhancing or replacing endogenous neurotransmitters. Agonists can be delivered systemically (such as by intravenous injection) or locally (intracerebrally) during a surgical procedure.
  • Transcranial magnetic stimulation - In some cases (for example, studies of motor cortex), this technique can be analyzed as having a stimulatory effect (rather than as a functional lesion).
  • optogenetic excitation - A light activated excitatory protein is expressed in select cells. Channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2), a light activated cation channel, was the first bacterial opsin shown to excite neurons in response to light,[14] though a number of new excitatory optogenetic tools have now been generated by improving and imparting novel properties to ChR2[15]

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Limitations and advantages

Different manipulations have advantages and limitations. Neural tissue destroyed by surgery, electric shock or neurotoxcin is a permanent manipulation and therefore limits follow-up investigation.[16] Most genetic manipulation techniques are also considered permanent.[16] Temporary lesions can be achieved with advanced in genetic manipulations, for example, certain genes can now be switched on and off with diet.[16] Pharmacological manipulations also allow blocking of certain neurotransmitters temporarily as the function returns to its previous state after the drug has been metabolized.[16]

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References

  1. Rosenzweig, Breedlove, Watson; Biological Psychology: An Introduction to Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience, 4/e, p. 3
  2. Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary » Psychobiology>
  3. Ibrahim B. Syed PhD, "Islamic Medicine: 1000 years ahead of its times", Journal of the International Society for the History of Islamic Medicine, 2002 (2): 2-9 [7]
  4. Amber Haque (2004), "Psychology from Islamic Perspective: Contributions of Early Muslim Scholars and Challenges to Contemporary Muslim Psychologists", Journal of Religion and Health 43 (4): 357-377 [366].
  5. Carlson, Neil (2007). Physiology of Behavior (9th Ed.). Allyn and Bacon. pp. 11–14. ISBN 0-205-46724-5. 
  6. James, William (1950/1890). The Principles of Psychology, Vol. One. Dover Publications, Inc.. pp. 4–5. ISBN 0-486-20381-6. 
  7. Shepherd, Gordon M. (1991). Foundations of the Neuron Doctrine. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-506491-7. 
  8. 8.0 8.1 Dewsbury, Donald (1991). "Psychobiology". American Psychologist (46): 198–205. 
  9. Kim, Jeansok J.; DeCola, Joseph P.; Landeira-Fernandez, Jesus; Fanselow, Michael S. "N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonist APV blocks acquisition but not expression of fear conditioning." Behavioral Neuroscience. Vol 105(1), Feb 1991, 126-133. {doi|10.1037/0735-7044.105.1.126}
  10. Schneider et al. "Controlling Neuronal Activity." American Journal of Psychiatry 165:562, May 2008 doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2008.08030444
  11. Zhang, et al. "Multimodal fast optical interrogation of neural circuitry." Nature. Vol 446. 5 April 2007. doi:10.1038/nature05744
  12. Chow, B. Y. et al. "High-performance genetically targetable optical neural silencing by light-driven proton pumps." Nature. Vol 463. 7 January 2010
  13. Gradinaru, Thompson, and Deisseroth. "eNpHR: a Natronomonas halorhodopsin enhanced for optogenetic applications." Brain cell Biology. Vol 36 (1-4). Aug 2008. DOI: 10.1007/s11068-008-9027-6
  14. Zhang, Wang, Boyden, and Deisseroth. "Channelrhodopsin-2 and optical control of excitable cells." Nature Methods. VOL.3 NO.10. OCTOBER 2006
  15. Gradinaru et al. "Molecular and Cellular Approaches for Diversifying and Extending Optogenetics." Cell. 2010. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2010.02.037
  16. 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 T Abel, KM Lattal (2001) "Molecular mechanisms of memory acquisition, consolidation and retrieval" Current Opinion in Neurobiology