What is Physiological Psychology?

Although Physiological Psychology was strictly gestated at the end of the 19th century from a text of Wilhelm Wundt Titled Principles of Physiological Psychology, this field of study has its roots with the ancient Greeks, who were already seeking to elucidate what makes us so unique.

Although philosophers like Aristotle thought that the brain served only to cool the blood, thus holding that the mind resided in the heart, figures such as Hippocrates and Galen offered clearer insights into the importance of the brain over behavior.

Galen, a Greek physician (129-200 AD) C) he would consider the brain such an important organ that he came to dissect cows, sheep, pigs, cats and dogs just to study it.

Physiological Psychology after the Scientific Revolution

Closer on the time line, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, intellectual positions related to physics and mathematics maintained a central axis in the study of behavior. A young man Rene Descartes, fascinated by the hidden mechanisms that made the statues of the Royal Gardens move in the West from Paris, he traced his theory of the workings of the body around these technological devices.

In his mind, the pressurized water that made the movable statues move was replaced by cerebrospinal fluid, the cylinders by muscles, and the valve by the Pineal gland. This would cause more men of his time to postulate new models around the functioning of the human body.

Galvani's discoveries

Italian physiologist Luigi Galvani gave a blow to the way in which the system proposed by Descartes had been understood, upon discovering that stimulating a frog's nerve caused the muscle to which it was attached to contract.

He observed that the brain does not inflate the muscles by sending fluid under pressure through the nerves.; the functioning of the nervous system was not so simple and mechanical. This was a vital contribution to the state of knowledge regarding the physiology of behavior.

Johannes Müller

Johannes Müller was another key figure for the birth of physiological psychology; his work through experimentation removing and isolating animal organs on which he performed a careful analysis of their responses when exposed to various chemicals would lead to explain that nerves are not only motors, but also parts of a sensor system.

His greatest contribution was precisely his doctrine of specific nervous energies: the quality of The sensation does not depend on the stimulus that affects the senses but on the type of nerve fiber that intervenes in the perception.

An example of this is that electrical stimuli applied to the optic nerves will only cause light sensations.

Pierre Florens and Paul Broca

Müller's mode was also shared by Pierre Flourens and Paul Broca, who experimented directly on the organ through different techniques.

Flourens, a 19th-century French physiologist considered the founder of the experimental science of the brain, examined the behavior of various animals after of removing various parts of the brain and conclusively demonstrated that those parts of the organ removed were responsible for the function affected; in this way, an animal from which the cerebellum will have problems with motor coordination.

Years later, Paul Broca used principles similar to those of Flourens, but with specific patients, those with speech problems. Thus he discovered in postmortem studies that most of his patients (except for one) had damage to the left third frontal gyrus.

Broca reported 25 cases with these alterations that affected the left hemisphere. Broca's successes were a great impetus for other characters like Wernicke will study the neuroanatomical bases related to language, and the contributions related to the study of behavior were maintained. Thanks to these contributions, among other things, we know what logic is behind the aphasia.

Physiological Psychology today

Currently, physiological psychologists are based on experimentation, using both generalization and reduction to explain behavior.

Physiological Psychology It has a multidisciplinary character and is strengthened from sources such as medicine, biology, chemistry, etc.. Finally, mention should also be made of contributions such as those of Ramón y Cajal, Francisco Varela, Mark Rosenzweig, Arnold Leiman, among others. Together, they created the fundamental foundations for the development of this science.

Bibliographic references:

• Rosenzweig, M & Leiman, A. (1992) Physiological Psychology. Spain: Mc Graw Hill.

• Sagan, Carl. 1986. Broca’s Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. New York: Ballantine Books.

• Kandel, E.R.; Schwartz, J.H.; Jessell, T.M. (2001). Principles of Neuroscience. Madrid: McGraw Hill.

• Carlson, Neil. (2006). Physiology of Behavior, Madrid, Pearson Education.