Biological Psychology
How do biological processes support psychological functioning?
Psychological life depends on living systems that develop, respond to their surroundings, and change with experience. Biological psychology connects cells and circuits with bodily regulation, motivation, sleep, conscious experience, and evolutionary history. It asks what different kinds of evidence establish, how explanations at different levels fit together, and where conclusions remain uncertain. Begin with the foundation to connect these questions before pursuing a particular process or kind of explanation.
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How Do Brain and Body Support Mind and Behavior?
An introduction to biological psychology through eleven works on neural organization, plasticity, brain–body regulation, motivation, sleep, and awareness.
Introductory · 11 core readings · 6 units · Prerequisites: No neuroscience course is assumed. The guides introduce essential biological and methodological terms; several reviews will reward more than one sitting. How to Read Psychological Science offers useful preparation in evaluating evidence, but is not a prerequisite.
Begin the syllabus →Additional syllabi
How Do Neural Circuits Turn Sensation into Action?
Connect cellular communication with sensory and motor circuits, then evaluate what recordings, models, and interventions explain about behavior.
Intermediate · 10 readings
How Does the Nervous System Develop and Change?
Examine how neural systems acquire and change their organization, and what evidence connects cellular change with learning, adaptation, or recovery.
Intermediate · 10 readings
How Do Brain and Body Regulate Each Other?
Examine how brain, body, and surroundings interact through regulation, interoception, hormones, stress, and immune signaling, and what their measures can establish.
Intermediate · 10 readings
How Do Biological Systems Shape Motivation and Emotion?
Distinguish seeking, pleasure, learning, effort, defense, and feeling—and evaluate the biological evidence offered to explain them.
Intermediate · 10 readings
How Do Biological Rhythms Organize Sleep and Waking?
Separate the mechanisms that time sleep from evidence about its functions, then examine how environmental and social schedules shape sleep and waking.
Intermediate · 9 readings
How Can We Study Conscious Experience?
Examine how public evidence can inform claims about subjective experience, from perceptual reports and brain stimulation to theory tests and altered states.
Intermediate · 9 readings
How Does Evolution Help Explain Behavior?
Learn what evidence distinguishes an evolutionary explanation of behavior from a plausible story, through conceptual arguments, animal experiments, species comparisons, and human field research.
Intermediate · 8 readings