The biological approach - Approaches [A-Level Psychology]

this is the brain If a psychologist claims that a particular behavior is due to how this organ functions they're taking a biological approach but when we talk about how the brain functions we could actually be referring to a range of different processes psychologist have divided the brain into different areas and identified large structures these structures have different roles and communicate with each other as well as sending and receiving information to and from the rest of the body the brain's functioning is influenced by chemical signals from the body called hormones and between individual neurons the cells

that make up the brain there are neurotransmitters that control neural communication alter these with say drugs and you can alter Behavior to take a biological approach to psychology we also need to include the role of genes as of course the human brain forms into a human brain due to the genes we inherit and to take this one stage further to understand why we have the genes needed to create the very distinctive human brain we need to include a discussion of evolution as features of the human brain have developed and been retained only because they've helped

of human survival the psych boost app now has three features flashcards multiple choice quizzes and see if you can work out the key term from it definition with the key term taster try paper one for free right now and Patron supporters can watch psych boost videos at free learn from over 17 hours of exclusive exam tutorial videos and access hundreds of digital and printable res sources including my Maps quiz sheets worksheets teaching slides and more the biological approach defining features as the introduction to this video has probably made clear there is a lot to the

biological approach but to simplify it for a moment the biological approach assumes humans are biological beings so Behavior should be explained with reference to biology biological structures neurochemistry genetics and evolution are all different aspects of biology that influence human behavior biological psychology is a fundamental part of your psychology course so much so that there's an entire unit just on biopsychology and the ideas explained in this video will also appear in most of the other units you might find in this particular approach's video I go into biosite Concepts into slightly more detail than you actually need

for an essay on the biological approach but as bios cycology is so important and it's going to get you marks across the a level it's really worthwhile trying to understand the core ideas of biopsychology as early as possible because I think it's especially important for you to fully understand biological psychology you can download the matching worksheet for this video for free follow the link in the description print it and fill it out as you watch I'll link to a few areas across the a level but you'll notice I try to focus on OCD that's because

you need to learn the biological approach in relation to OCD for paper one if you've already studied that it's a helpful reference or if you haven't studied it yet it should be easier after this video so let's explain each of these features and evaluate bioy we can do this in any order so let's start with the largest biological structure and work down to the smallest the influence of biological structures on Behavior the largest biological structure that influences behavior is the body-wide system of glands that make up the endocrine system these glands release chemical Messengers called

hormones one gland the adrenal gland activates in the fight or flight response the brain dets a fret and instructs the adrenal gland to release a hormone called adrenaline this rushes across the body carried by the bloodstream its effects include increasing blood flow to the brain and skeletal muscles and reducing blood flow to digestion and to the surface skin as in an emergency situation thinking and quick reflexes are more important than digestion and if you're about to get damaged you might as well reduce blood loss from non-critical areas hormones can also have long-term effects on the

body and Behavior such as sex hormones like testosterone and estrogen testosterone is linked to the sexually diamoric male body features as well as to increase aggression of course the most important biological structure for psychologists is the brain the brain is after all the center of all conscious and unconscious form the brain is connected to the body by the brain stem Above This is a structure called the cerebellum the rest of the brain is called the celebrium it has two hemispheres connected by a a bundle of nerve fibers called the Corpus goosin each hemisphere is subdivided

into four loes occipital temporal peral and frontal deeper in the brain is an area called the lyic system including structures called the amydala the fmus and the hippocampus localization of function is the idea certain brain areas are responsible for certain functions and while I wouldn't expect you to explain all of this in an essay on bioy you will want to know this for the bioc pychology unit so it's worthwhile given a quick introduction of some of the functions of each part the brain stem controls our core abilities like heart rate and breathing the cerebellum is

involved in coordinating muscle movements and balance the cpal lobe is for visual perception areas of the temporal lobe process auditory information areas of the pretal lobe receive Sensations from across the body and the frontal lobe is responsible for rational decision- making the lyic system is the emotional center of the brain of course this explanation is a little simplistic and many areas have multiple other functions well in an essay explaining the biological approach we might want to pick out just one or two the research identify the location of many of the functions in the brain were

often case studies of neutral individuals if you've just watched my cognitive approaches video you likely remember tan tan had difficulty with speech production only being able to say tan after tan died post research revealed brain damage in an area that was called Brock's area after Tan's doctor many years later brain activation studies confirm brochas area is active when neurotypical brains produce language This research confirms brain structures role in producing behavior in this case speech production the biological structure of the brain is constructed of nerve cells information travels across these nerve cells in the form of

electricity however these nerve cells don't quite touch the gap between two nerve cells is called the CTIC left at this point the syapse the electrical message has to be converted to a chemical signal which which leads us to the next action the influence of neurochemistry on Behavior to understand how neurochemicals can influence how we behave let's take a look at the structure of the syapse in a little more detail we can see that the axent terminal of the presynaptic neuron and the dendrite of the postsynaptic neuron close but don't quite touch the prestic neuron contains

neurotransmitters inside structures called vesicles when the electrical signal called an action potential reaches the actual terminal the neurotransmitter are pushed out of the syapse cross a synaptic C and detected by receptors on the postoptic cell there are lots of different neurotransmitters but when detected by the postoptic cell they're either excitatory making a new electric charge more likely or inhibitory making a new electric charge less likely if there are more excitatory influences the signal passed on so if that's the syapse and how neurochemicals work how does this influence behavior well there are a wide range of

neurotransmitters and they have different functions serotonin is linked to feelings of well-being and happiness dopamine is a reward neurotransmitter and is responsible for intense pleasure many illegal drugs like cocaine influence the level of dopamine nor adrenaline is associated with attention and glutamate is associated with learning in memory knowing the influence of neurotransmitters on Behavior leads to drug therapies one class of drugs that are useful to know are anti-depressants called ssris they're used of course for depression but also OCD ssris are selective serotonin reuptake Inhibitors a very well- named drug as they select they only work

on serotonin and what they do is they stop the reuptake of Serotonin this is a process of being reabsorbed into the preoptic cell this keeps serotonin in the syapse and enhances its activity increasing feelings of well-being and happiness there is research to show these drugs are effective a me analysis by sorro compared ssris to placebos placebos are sugar pills that make the patient think they're receiving drug therapy samor combined the data from 17 studies including 3,97 participants into a metanalysis the results showed that compared to the bbos ssris significantly reduce the symptoms of OCD this

suggests not only that the drug therapy is effective but importantly as we're arguing that neurochemistry influences Behavior the fact that drugs do work work suggest behavior is influenced by neurochemistry the influence of genes on Behavior going now to an even smaller biological structure we can talk about how genes influence behavior DNA is a biological structure and genes are sequences on the DNA our genes instruct how our cells are formed and function for example there are a range of candidate genes that been associated with OCD one important example is the C Gene this part of the

genetic code influences the serotonin transport we've just covered we need to understand the terms genotype and phenotype and it's helpful to use a physical example if someone has blue eyes the actual physical presence of blue eyes are the fin type they have blue eyes because they have the genes for blue eyes this genetic code is their genotype I use ey color as an obvious example as it's easy to see how genes code for physical characteristics biological psychologists are interested in behaviors like aggression intelligence and mental health conditions in the same way I caller has a

genotype biological psychologists argue there are genotypes for Behavior and the phenotype is the expression of the behavior to study the genetic inheritance of behavior psychologists compare family members and twins they measure what is known as the concordance rate the likelihood of one person have a disorder if another person has a disorder if a disorder is genetic we should see higher levels of concordance in family members who share more genetic material an example we can use as research evidence is when it comes to OCD the prevalence rate in the general population is 2% however if an

individual has OCD the likelihood that their first-degree relative has OCD the concordance rate increases to 10% this increased risk is arguably due to the share genetics with first-degree relatives sharing 50% of their genes identical twins who share 100% of their genetic makeup also known as monotic twins have been shown to have a 68% concordance rate for OCD while nonidentical or dizygotic twins have a 31% concordance rate however you can see in all of these cases the likelihood of a relative also having OCD is lower than their sh genetic material this is because it is possible

that genotypes and phenotypes don't match giving a physical example again someone could have a genotype that gives them the potential to be tall however they don't receive nutrition when growing up then the genotype will not be expressed and their phenotype will be shorter than their potential in the same way not everyone with a genetic vulnerability to OCD will go on to develop the disorder this is called the diis stress response the genetic vulnerability is the diis and the stress will be things like childhood neglect a traumatic event or adult drug use without the presence of

the stressor then the individual can have normal mental health again we can use this as an evaluation it shows that biological processes alone are not a complete explanation of behavior a quick quick note in this video I've used physical examples like blue eyes and height to help you understand the relationship between genotype and phenotype however when writing about the work of biological psychologists you need to focus your writing on how genes can influence the expression of behaviors like aggression and OCD Evolution and behavior it's likely you're aware of the basic principles of evolution from biology

this is Darwin's idea that organisms adapt to their environment through natural selection creatures with characteristics that make them more likely survive and breed pass these characteristics onto future members of the population in other words adaptive characteristics are selected for generally evolution is used to explain physical characteristics bigger muscles faster legs stronger Wings evolutionary psychologists argue that behavior is also inherited an innate behavior that gives a survival Advantage is selected for and becomes more common in future members of a species evolutionary ologists explain human aggression this way in early Hunter gaver societies aggressive behavior particularly in

males was useful in protecting a family hunting prey and standing out from the other males when attracting a meate those males that were less aggressive were less likely to pass on their passive genes we are all the descendants of Hunter gabas who manag to pass on their genes while high levels of aggression are not as useful in modern society we do still have the genes of our ancestors and this might explain the high levels of aggression in modern males compared to females we've covered the biological approach in detail and I hope that helped you understand

the concepts not just remember them but if you were to write an essay on the biological approach then you wouldn't need that level of detail this is a summary of the main points evaluating the biological approach we can use any of the research studies I've mentioned so far as evaluations the nstat and Samar ones on OCD the case study of tan and the family and twin studies for genetics these provide research evidence that demonstrate the assumptions of the biological approach worth remembering all of them as we're going to be using them again in the Psychopathology

and the bioc pychology unit we can also use a diis stress response as an evaluation of the biological approach as a whole pointing out the difficulty of separating the influence of nurture and nature and behavior again another good evaluation to remember for OCD and schizophrenia you might have noticed I try to reuse evaluations in these videos as much as possible so there's less to remember overall for most people the most obvious positive evaluation of the biological approach are the real life applications of these theories biological theories of mental health conditions like schizophrenia OCD and depression

have led to the development of Highly Effective drug therapies that act on neurochemical processes one example is the anti-depressant ssris these work by reducing serotonin uptake these drugs have helped millions of people return to normal functioning live more fulfilling lives and contribute to the the economy by returning to work the biological approach is also regarded as highly scientific the biological tools used include fmri scanners genetic analysis and direct measurements of biological substances like hormones and neurotransmitter levels this direct observation combined with highly controlled research studies is more objective than relying on self-report methods or inferences

used by other psychological approaches this means we tend to have more confidence in the reliability of biological findings a problem with taking a biological perspective when explaining all behavior is it leads to viewing Behavior as biologically determined someone has a mental health disorder because of an imbalance of neur transmitters or someone's a criminal because they've inherited a criminal Gene this biological determinism has consequences arguing there a criminal Gene potentially undermines the legal system's Assumption of criminal responsibility after all no one can control the genes they are born with and assuming someone's mental health is fully

biological in nature means it's out of their control and they may need to be dependent on anti-depressants whereas a cognitive soft deterministic perspective maybe more empowering assuming an individual can alter their own thought processes I want to thank everyone over on patreon for supporting the channel because of you I've been able to teach parttime meaning I can make psych boost on YouTube for everyone I do have extra resources are exclusive to my patrons so if you decide to sign up you can grab those over my website and these include over 100 exam question tutorial videos

of course including questions on the approaches unit I hope this was helpful and I'll see you in the next psych Boost video