Neurobiology and psychology

Question

Both 'neurobiology' and 'psychology' greatly relate to each other. How would differentiate them in easy words - perhaps, using some analogy.Please guide me. Thanks.

Avangi · Accepted Answer

Sounds like an impossible task to me.

Biology is strictly physical. Psychology started out being strictly "mental" or "behavioral," but science can now relate elements or events in the physical nerves to elements and events in a person's behavior. (The whole nervous system including the brain is made up of neurons, so "neurobiology" deals with the physical aspect of all of that.)
Of course chemistry is now an integral part of it all, helping to link the two.

Jackson6612 · Answer

Thanks, Avangi. But isn't  then psychology all about neurobiology, genetics, society, how you're brought up, physiological changes such as hormones etc.? Perhaps, neurobiology is all about mental hardware and then software part belongs to psychology, and that software results from different sources such genetics, society, etc. What do you say? Please let me know.

Avangi · Answer

Psychology is about neurobiology like arithmetic is about penmanship.

As a student of grammar, you must realize that there are many schools of thought.

And definitions keep changing. There was a time when doctors thought the heart pumped air.

Physical science dealt with earth, wind and fire.

"Psychology" is what the psychologists want it to be.

I suppose if someone decides that alien space ships travel by jumping from one parallel universe to another, then astronomy is about quantum physics.

Kooyeen · Answer

Jackson6612Both 'neurobiology' and 'psychology' greatly relate to each other.

I don't think they do. They are totally different things.
Neurobiology deals with the nervous system and tries to understand how it works.
Psychology deals with human beings and tries to understand how they behave, and why they behave in certain ways.

Of course you might think they are connected, because we assume that the way we behave depends on something that goes on in our brains. However, they study different things, even though they are theoretically connected.
As you said, you could say that neurobiology is about the "hardware" (electronics), while psychology is about the "software" (programming).

Avangi · Answer

When Jung was analyzing dreams, I don't believe he thought of the brain as a biological entity. Of course they knew that some drugs affected behavior.

But these days, psychiatrists treat behavioral disorders with drugs rather than with sessions on the couch.
I think, for example, they discovered a few years back that Prozac chemically enhances the passage of the "electrical" impulse through the synapses. This has a profound effect on behavior, and it's in the province of neurobiology, or chemoneurobiology, or whatevertheheck.

Neurobiology and psychology

Top answer

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

Related Questions