In 1745 a French phisician wrote a book called “The Natural History of the Soul” which was based on the fact that body is not just a machine, the soul is not different from the mind and that the mind was part of the body.
Evantually In 1981, the view of behaviour as having a physiological basis was proven by a French doctor, Paul Broca. By comming across a case in which a man lost the ability to speak comprehensibly after a head unjury, He came up with the theory of Localization of function.An assumption that specific functions are associated with specific areas of the brain.
The influence of heredity had also a big role in development of the biological perspective.
Charles Darwin implied that species evovlement was based on environmental conditions through a process called natural selection. Natural selection means that any inheritable charasteristic that increases the likelihood of survival will be maintained in the species because individuals having the characteristic will be more likely to survive and reproduce. But when species do this they tend to produce more that the environment can support. Because of lack of space, the compitition for survival will increase and some of these species will not survive. But the species who die as a consequence of the compitition were not totally random, darwin found that those species more suited to their environment were more likely to survive. This resulted in the well known phrase survival of the fittest, where the organisms most suited to their environment had more chance of survival if the species falls upon hard times.
A good example of a species ability to adapt concerns the the color of the Gypsy Moths in England. When the industrial revolution occurred, coal and other industrial factories spewed out massive amounts of air pollutants, so much so that even during the day the skies were as dark as night. The original color of the gypsy moths was a light gray; such a color blended in with the trees in their environment, and acted as camouflage against predators. With the change in the environment the camouflage adaptation no longer functioned because the trees were darker colored from the air pollution. The dark gray gypsy, once at a disadvantage and quickly eaten by predators, now survived and bred, while their lighter copys were eaten. As a result the gypsy moth, through adaptation and natural selection, was able to gradually change it's coloring to a dark gray-black, to match the surface of the trees covered in pollution. The gypsy moths didn't just decide one day to change their color, at the basis of such a change was the concept of Natural Selection.
The two concepts of Materialism and Heredity are the foundation of the biological approach to psychology.
There are different methods used for study and research of the biological problems in psychology. One is electroencephalograp(EEG). (EEG) is a device for recording the electrical activity of the brain by means of electrodes placed on the scalp. Another method is (ESB), electrical stimulation of the brain. In this technique, small clusters of cells are activated by inserting a wire into the desired area, and then applying a small electric current. (ESB) poses some basic questions about the brain and mind. It discovered that electrical stimulation of certain regions of the limbic system and midbrain seemed to produce pain but it also could produce pleasure in some other parts.Through these discoveries, the localization of functions which implies that each aspect of behiour is produced by a specific location in the brain was clear to the materialists.
Scanning techniques(computerized imaging) is another way of studying the brain, it produces images of sections and functions of brain. There are two broad categories of brain scan-structural and functional.
Structural imaging include (CAT)computerized axial tomography and magnetic resonance imaging(MRI). These produce images of sections of the brain, either on a slide or a TV monitor. CAT scans take x-ray photographs, which can be computerassembled into a single image.. MRI scanning uses a powerful magnetic field instead of x-ray which can produce a series of images. These methods help psychologists to compare the structure of brains that are functioning normally and abnormally.
For visualising events that are actually happening in the brain you can use the functional imaging techniques. (PET) positron emission tomography scanning involves injecting a radioactive isotope into the blood. By measuring the radiation levels in different parts of the brain, you can determine where the most blood is flowing to and hence which parts are most active.
