What is Physiological Psychology?

The union between psychology and physiology led us to the basic knowledge about the brain.

Although physiological psychology was strictly gestated at the end of the 19th century from a text by Wilhelm Wundt entitled Principles of Physiological Psychology, this field of study has its roots in the ancient Greeks, who sought to elucidate what makes us so unique.

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

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

Physiological Psychology after the Scientific Revolution

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

In his mind, the pressurized water that made the moving 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 for the functioning of the human body.

Galvani's discoveries

The Italian physiologist Luigi Galvani struck a blow to the way in which the system proposed by Descartes had been understood.When he discovered that stimulating a frog's nerve caused the Muscle to which it was attached to contract.

He observed that the brain does not inflate muscles by sending pressurized fluid to them through the nerves; the functioning of the nervous system was not so simple and mechanical.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 in the birth of physiological psychology; his work by experimentally removing and isolating organs from animals on which he performed a thorough analysis of their responses to exposure to various chemicals would come to explain that nerves are not only a function of the nervous system, but also of the nervous system. that nerves are not only motors, but also parts of a system of sensors..

His greatest contribution was precisely his doctrine of specific nerve energies: the quality of sensation does not depend on the stimulus affecting the senses but on the type of nerve fiber involved in perception.

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

Pierre Florens and Paul Broca

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

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

Years later, Paul Broca used principles similar to Flourens', but with specific patients, those with the cerebellum and the cerebellum.but with specific patients, those with speech problems. He thus discovered in postmortem studies that most of his patients (with the exception of one) had damage to the left third frontal gyrus.

Broca reported 25 cases with these alterations that had affected the left hemisphere. Broca's successes were a major impetus for other figures such as Wernicke studied the neuroanatomical bases related to language, and the contributions related to the study of behavior were maintained.and the contributions related to the study of behavior were maintained. Thanks to these contributions, among other things, we know the logic behind aphasia.

Physiological Psychology today

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

Physiological Psychology has a multidisciplinary character and draws strength 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 bases for the development of this science.

Bibliographical 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). Principios de Neurociencia. Madrid: McGraw Hill.

• Carlson, Neil. (2006). Fisiología de la Conducta, Madrid, Pearson Educación.