How psychobiology explains human behavior

The explanation of behavior from psychobiology has interested all behavioral science professionals, whether they are within its paradigms or not. Psychobiology emerged throughout the second half of the last 20th century. It is the result of the gradual integration of knowledge from psychology and biology.

Psychobiology thereby creates a new broad, unifying and powerful framework of reference to address its object of study: human behavior. From this discipline, Behavior is understood as a biological process that allows us an active and adaptive interaction with the environment In which we live.

To do this, it seeks to reveal which structures of the nervous system are responsible for behavior, what processes set it in motion, how it is regulated, what purpose it has and how it has been modeled throughout evolution.

The emergence of psychobiology

Scientific psychology as such arises with behaviorism. Behavior is considered as a positive, objective fact, perceptible by the senses, verifiable and capable of being quantified. Those manifestations whose knowledge is only achievable through introspection are excluded.

Under the paradigm of behaviorism (stimulus-response: ER), proposed in 1913 by John B. Watson, the response (behavior) was an exclusive function of the stimulus. This paradigm served for the development of scientific Psychology. It is an analysis of behavior that does not take into account organic processes and the evolutionary history that has shaped them.

In 1917, the American Robert Woodworth (1869-1962), proposed the paradigm: stimulus-organism-response (EOR), as a frame of reference in which to frame any scientific study of behavior. In this way, behavior ceased to be a variable that was only a function of the stimulus, but also depended on the organism.

To what extent each exerts its effects is the task that has occupied those who dedicate themselves to the study of behavior ever since. The ER model lasted well into the middle of the 20th century in the most radical behaviorist circles, but The EOR paradigm, in which psychobiology is formally framed, is in the current frame of reference of any scientific study of behavior.

Once the model that psychobiology follows has been defined, what behavior is must be clearly defined since the responses that we can observe in an animal are very varied and not all of them can be classified as behavior itself.

Explanation of behavior according to psychobiology

The behavior is a biological property that, like the rest of the characteristics of living beings, has been shaped by natural selection. It is the reflection of evolution and together with the other two elements of the EOR paradigm, the stimulus and the organism, it forms what is called an adaptive complex.

The characteristics of this adaptive complex vary between species and to a lesser extent between individuals.
to others, since they depend on two factors.

The first of them is the phylogenetic and refers to the evolutionary history that the species has experienced.The second is the ontogenic factor and collects the circumstances in which the individual’s life has developed
from the moment of its conception.

Behavior and phylogeny

The set of adaptations achieved throughout the phylogeny that includes the genetic pool of the species and that enables any member of the species to receive a certain stimulus spectrum, process this information in a certain way and emit a behavioral response, is called distant causes of behavior.

They are responsible for the differences that exist between speciescausing, for example, that bees have photoreceptors sensitive to ultraviolet light, that our species can communicate through language, or that birds fly in the presence of a predator.

Behavior and ontogeny

The second factor involved in the characteristics of the adaptive complex is the ontogenic factor. The differences between individuals even if they have the same phylogeny are motivated by the particular genetic endowment of each individual and the interactions that occur between that genotype and the environment throughout life.

These interactions They constitute the proximate causes of behavior. They are responsible for ensuring that the general characteristics of the species are expressed in a particular way in each individual, thereby increasing the diversity within it.

Genetic weight

The weight of genetic factors is very important. They give us our characteristics as individuals belonging to a species and differentiate us. When it is indicated that a trait depends on or is genetically controlled, it should not be understood in a deterministic way.

Its characteristics are the result of the interaction between genotype and environment. To the set of environmental factors that act Modulating the expression of the information collected in the genotype, they are called epigenetic factors.

Its effects on the nervous system may have a greater or lesser degree of reversibility. The less reversible effects are associated with critical periods that are generally limited to the perinatal stage. An example of this is the action exerted by sex hormones in the early stages of postnatal development.

Psychobiology and the study of neuronal plasticity

Reversible effects are related to a very important property of the nervous system: neuronal plasticity, which is the ability of neurons to experience changes in their morphology and physiology in the face of different environmental situations.

This property has been of great importance throughout the phylogeny of promote the appearance of processes as important as learning and memory which, in turn, have allowed the development of nervous systems that respond more flexibly and efficiently to environmental challenges.

Psychobiology establishes a new, unifying and broad frame of reference in which to integrate the results obtained in the field of biology and psychology in order to explain human behavior. It is framed within the EOR paradigm and its object of study is the scientific analysis of human behavior.

Currently, far from offering reductionist explanations, Psychobiology strives to obtain data that contribute to a holistic explanation of behavior that integrates all the explanatory factors coming from science.

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