Biological Psychology : An Introduction to Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience

Biological Psychology is a comprehensive survey of the biological bases of behavior that is authoritative and up-to-date. Designed for undergraduates enrolled in Biological Psychology, Physiological Psychology, or Behavioral Neuroscience, the book continues to offer an outstanding illustration program that engages students, making even complicated topics and chains of events clear. The book offers a broad perspective, encompassing lucid descriptions of behavior, evolutionary history, development, proximate mechanisms, and applications. New coauthor Neil V. Watson brings his expert knowledge of the field and the course to the Fourth Edition. This edition is designed to make the book even more readable. Each chapter has been made more concise and now begins with a brief narrative relating the topic to the human condition. The new edition boasts hundreds of new references, including research students may have encountered in the popular media. Yet critical thinking skills are also honed as the reader is alerted to the many widely-held myths about the neuroscience of behavior (different parts of the tongue detect only certain flavors, dogs are color-blind, sleep deprivation makes you crazy), and educated about facts that sound so unlikely to the uninformed (some people cannot feel pain, in some animals only half the brain sleeps at a time, ears make sounds, some people cannot form new memories, experience alters the structure of the brain). Thorough and reader-friendly, Biological Psychology reveals the fascinating interactions of brain and behavior.

Key Features

* The book has an outstanding full-color art program, including hundreds of original drawings that make it easy to understand structures, mechanisms, and processes in the brain.
* Each chapter opens with a brief narrative illustrating an important aspect of behavioral biology that will be made clear to the student by reading the rest of the chapter.
* Chapters end with a summary of the main points and offer recommended reading for students who want to learn more.
* Icons alert students to important methods, clinical issues, competing hypotheses, and instances in which genes, evolution, or neural plasticity are at work.
* Every copy comes with Learning Biological Psychology, an electronic study referenced from CD icons throughout the text.

MARK R. ROSENZWEIG, Professor of Graduate Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. S. MARC BREEDLOVE, faculty member in the Psychology Department at the University of California, Berkeley, for over 20 years, he is currently the Barnett Rosenberg Professor of Neuroscience at Michigan State University. NEIL V. WATSON, Associate Professor, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby.