Biopsychology & Your Mind
Biopsychology & Your Mind explains the way your mind works – and why it sometimes doesn’t. The key is your mental mechanics: molecular, neural, and biological mechanisms.
This book explores the unexpected properties of thoughts, feelings, emotions, and actions, examining phenomena such as blindsight, associative learning, intact memory in amnesia, and dreaming during sleep. Using evolutionary biopsychology as a framework, it addresses fundamental questions: What constitutes an emotion? How do thoughts and emotions interact? The text reveals how evolution has shaped our mental mechanics to seek adaptive balances, often switching between extremes depending on current circumstances. Mental disorders are presented as otherwise adaptive reactions that are occurring either in unusually extreme situations or within systems that are unusually reactive. The book demonstrates how evolutionary pressures have created mental systems that rapidly change between states, seeking optimal responses rather than fixed solutions.
This book is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand mental machinery and psychological disorders. Detailed notes, references, and technical sections also make it an ideal companion for all students of biopsychology.
Neil McNaughton is an Emeritus Professor and Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in the Department of Psychology (Te Tari Whakamātau Hinekaro) at the University of Otago (Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka) in Aotearoa/New Zealand.