PSYC 372 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Institutional Animal Care And Use Committee, Behavioral Neuroscience, Neuropharmacology
Document Summary
Biopsychology as a neuroscience (introduction) notes: biopsychology. What biologically causes us to act the way we do: goal of biological psychology. Study how activity of the nervous system underlies behavior and mental experience. The brain is responsible for understanding and remembering, but can a brain understand itself: biological psychologists. Ethics of animal research: research using animals has given us a lot of information about the brain and corresponding behavior (the problem is increasing knowledge while minimizing the distress for the animal: university regulations. Human subjects review board (hsrb): practical/ethical constraints which sometimes require use of animals. Institutional animal care and use committee (iacuc): must weight the costs (animal pain/distress) with the benefits (increased knowledge) Most institutions have strict regulations regarding the use of animals: experiments vs. non-experiments. Experiments: method used to determine whether a change in one variable causes a change in another variable.