Students should review the ACC Catalog's Course Description for this PSYC course. Students should familiarize themselves with ACC policies, procedures, expectation, and the Student Handbook via www.austincc.edu.  The last day for a student to withdraw is available there. Students should review the information available at http://www.austincc.edu/current for information about withdrawals, deadlines, transcripts, financial aid, health issues, international student status, or academic standing. It is highly recommended that the student see an advisor or counselor before making changes.

For a student to make an A in the class, two hours of focused research on each class' topic is likely necessary (though this may not be sufficient. Participation in class discussions is highly encouraged. It is better to ask questions than to wonder silently, and on-topic observations are welcomed. Definitions will be requested in class by the professor. Attendance in the class is the way to get the most out of the course, as I will make a serious effort to make these topics come alive. These themes about the biology, natural selection, genes, neuroscience, behavioral and emotional health, the relationship of mind to brain, memory, the nature of consciousness relative to physiology, and others are not dry topics nor of interest only to academics, healthcare professionals, philosophers  and scientists; rather, these are proper topics for each and every educated adult.

ACC expects our students to be mature, collegial, and responsible.  Naturally, any student whose conduct or dress at any time is in violation of the law, is a public nuisance, or is deemed improper or detrimental to the College may be subject to warnings and/or disciplinary action.  It is only fair that students are therefore expected to respect the rights and welfare of other members of the College community and its guests. As such, violence, the threat of violence, any disruption to the learning process, or intimidation will be subject to disciplinary action.

In keeping with the great tradition of free inquiry and the life of the mind so critical to higher education and Western Civilization, the Department of Psychology respects Academic Freedom. Therefore, each student is certainly strongly encouraged to participate in discussions. However, in any classroom situation that includes discussion and critical thinking about the mind, behavior, and the nature of human beings, there will be many differing viewpoints. This exposure is a strength, and not a weakness, as consideration of diverse views is critical for intellectual and professional development. It is to be expected that students may disagree with each other at times. Patient, thoughtful, respectful exchanges are the expected result of differences of opinion.

Learning to disagree, and to have one’s ideas challenged, is interesting, stimulating, and of paramount importance to one’s career and to the life of the mind. The students and the instructor may also find that they have divergent views on sensitive and emotionally powerful themes.  These differences can certainly enhance the course experience!   Of course your grade will not be adversely affected by any beliefs or ideas expressed in class or assignments. On the contrary, it is expected that all of us do our best to respect the views of others, when expressed in classroom discussions. This includes respectful disagreement and debate, skills an adult should attempt to master.

Any chattering or activity in class that distracts the professor or fellow students will be noted, and Final Grade decreased each time.

Grading Scheme:

:A :90 or above

B: 80 or above

C: 70 or above

D: 60 or above

F Below 60

Spend two hours per lecture/four hours per week researching the topics, terms, and concepts below. Library resources are a good tool. Recommended (especially for Psychology and healthcare majors) but optional text: https://oercommons.org/courseware/unit/8474

WEEK 1 Introduction: What is Biological Psychology? What is the relationship of physiology to the mind? The tension between understanding biological psychology in terms of lived, everyday, "primary reality" that is meaningful and existentially significant for people, vs the "objective" and "cold" description of human beings as biological machines shaped by natural selection from the natural sciences.  Psyche as soul. Questions about biological psychology come from the legacy of psychology's origins in the practical healing arts and medicine, then liberal arts (especially philosophy), and sciences such as biology, genetics, the theory of natural selection, pharmacology, chemistry and physics The increasingly neuroscientific and psychopharmacological quality of the larger field of psychology. The scientific idea of Man as machine vs the humanistic portraits of human nature. Mechanisms of natural selection, artifical selection, DNA, RNA, proteins,  genes, the origin of life human evolution, and human nature.   Entropy as a master concept that helps us understand life, order, disorder, DNA, and genes.ASSIGNMENT 1: Watch a video on maJor debates in psychology at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AljYxcERgY and read and research origin of life, DNA. ASSIGNMENT 2: Read and research genes, traits, natural selection, evolution. Watch a video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE5Js-9AzHo Podcast lectures at https://soundcloud.com/user-595534564/introduction-to-psychology-part-two and https://soundcloud.com/user-595534564/introduction-to-psychology-the-logic-of-life

WEEK 2 The environment selecting for traits, rather like how animal breeders select for traits. Natural selection as the great shaper of human bodies, behavior, and experience. Classical idea of genetics in terms of recessive and dominant heritable traits, as developed by Mendel, vs. modern idea of gene as the instructions on DNA to assemble RNA sequences, which assembles proteins and bodily and behavioral traits. Darwin and Wallace and natural selection. The idea that genes are using us to copy themselves; aka the "selfish gene."  ASSIGNMENT 1: Read and research selfish gene, genetics, genomics, heredity. ASSIGNMENT 2: Read and research Mendel, Darwin, traits. Watch a documentary at   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhFKPaRnTdQ Podcast lecture at https://soundcloud.com/user-595534564/evolution-homo-sapiens-and-psychology

Development of human psychological life over evolutionary, prehistorical, and historical time.  Evolutionary psychology. Mitochondiral Eve, the "Out of Africa" hypothesis vs multiregional theories of human development over evolutionary time. The development of symbols and language, the "great leap forward" or "behavioral modernity". Symbol use and the origins of language and writing, progressing from pictures to pictograms to abstract characters and letters. ASSIGNMENT: Watch Spencer Wells' Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey documentary at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6nEGfcwMNA Watch a documentary about the "great leap forward" or cognitive modernity at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgg0bhfNjo0, then read from The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution at https://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/the-10000-year-explosion-how-civilization-accelerated-human-evolution-2009-by-gregory-cochran-henry-harpending.pdf  Podcast at https://soundcloud.com/user-595534564/human-prehistory-environments-cognition-and-behavior

WEEK 3 History of biological Psychology: ideas about the mind, body and health from the ancient world.   Psyche as the "life force" that gives living things their form, or soul as the form of the body. Logos as a complex term that means "to reckon with", "word", "to make an argument", or even the coupling of rational mind to intelligible cosmos. The ongoing development of ideas about psychology and mental illness over historical time. Greek ideas about mental health. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/01/diagnosing-mental-illness-in-ancient-greece-and-rome/282856/ ASSIGNMENT: Watch documentaries on the Scientific Revolution and on the Enlightenment at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ2dSTQwJo8 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drgsZc8Gjb8

The development of the modern  ideas about biology, the mind, behavior and health via the Scientific Revolution, and the Cartesian mind/body dualism and the subject/object split. The current dilemma: the personal self in an everyday existential world of meaning, relative to mechanistic, soul-less models of psychology informed by chemistry, genetics, evolution, psychopharmacology and cognitive neuroscience. 

History of Biological Psychology: Darwin, Freud, Jung and William James. Psychosomatics, Freud's psychoanalysis and repressed-energy model, Jung's archetypes and collective unconscious. Psychophysics, scientific psychology, psychophysiology and mental illness,  ASSIGNMENT: Read and research https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hide-and-seek/201206/the-culture-mental-illness Stress as a window onto existential and biological perspectives on health. Clinical psychology. Psychological Disorders and Treatment of Psychological Disorders. Cognitive-behavioral therapy as an American pragmatic variant of the talking cure. Humanistic psychology and existential-phenomenological psychology dealing with the meaning of life, embodiment, self-actualizing. 

WEEK 4 Mental illness, biology, neuroscience, and psychopharacology. Depression, PTSD, autism, and schizophrenia. ASSIGNMENT: Read and research-Read a BBC piece on whether Freud still matters at http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20140421-does-freud-still-matter  Experience of schizophrenia: read https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/a-mother-helps-son-in-his-struggle-with-schizophrenia/2013/05/25/3c92c63e-c19a-11e2-8bd8-2788030e6b44_story.html and http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/schizophrenia-identity/ and http://brainblogger.com/2012/08/07/schizophrenia-and-psychosis-brain-disease-or-existential-crisis/

Neuroscience, cognition and behavior: the brain and the body. Neurons, signals, neurotransmitters, synapses, neural networks, action potentials, ions, receptors, and the cortex. ASSIGNMENT: Read and research: watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPix_X-9t7E&list=PLmfNjLhJKYDPhlIabYGYAExVAILOmWqVX and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZG8M_ldA1M&list=PLmfNjLhJKYDPhlIabYGYAExVAILOmWqVX&index=2 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4N-7AlzK7s&list=PLmfNjLhJKYDPhlIabYGYAExVAILOmWqVX&index=5 Look up definitions of neurons, signals, neurotransmitters, synapses, neural networks, action potentials, ions, receptors, and the cortex.  Recommended: Good vids reviewing molecular biology and neurobiology basics at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHeTQLNFTgU, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_zD3NxSsD8, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89W6uACEb7M, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSkxlpNs3tU, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIGqp6_PG6k, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9p2ou1IyC0 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdUUP2pMmQ4. Neuroplasticity, Homeostasis, embodied cognition, peripheral nervous system, role of the "second brain" or "little brain". ASSIGNMENT: Read and research:http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/ and  http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-feelings-the-second-brain-in-our-gastrointestinal-systems-excerpt/ and a piece about how the brain's plasticity is un-computerlike: https://www.rxwiki.com/feature-article/stress-trauma-well-learning-and-novelty-can-affect-brain-structure-and-function

WEEK 5 Review and Exam 1 (will issue communication about exam)

WEEK 6 Neuroscience and psychophysiology relative to Sensation and Perception: optical illusions, visual cortex, sensation vs. perception.Language and Thought: Chomsky vs. behaviorist theories of language, syntax vs semantics, universal grammar, and the Piraha debate..  ASSIGNMENT: Read and research: Chomsky, Chomsky vs Skinner, Chomskyian linguistics, cognitivism vs behaviorism. Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9shPouRWCs and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zobBTuX03D8

Personality, genetics, human growth and development, and the life cycle. ASSIGNMENT: Read and research Piaget 's stages of cognitive development at https://open.library.okstate.edu/foundationsofeducationaltechnology/chapter/2-cognitive-development-the-theory-of-jean-piaget/#:~:text=Piaget%20proposed%20four%20major%20stages,of%20childhood%2C%20but%20only%20approximately , and Erickson's Stages and understanding of the life cycle at http://www.simplypsychology.org/Erik-Erikson.html.  The nature of happiness, what is necessary for human flourishing, and the meaning of life: different views. Moral excellence and human nature. Psyche, logos and kosmos.  Read and research: Psychology, biology, health and eudaemonia or the "good life": four views by Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Nietzsche: http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/plato-aristotle-nietzsche-kants-ideas-on-the-good-life.html and http://lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/ph/ph_01philosophyyouth14.html

WEEK 7 Consciousness: can cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and biological psychology make progress understanding it? A historical view: psychophysics, introspection, phenomenology, behaviorism, cognitivism, neuroscience and the gradual reawakening of interest in consciousness studies. Crick and the "astonishing hypothesis". Chalmers' "hard problem" vs "easy problem" of consciousness. Neurophenomenology, embodied cognition, Damasio's post-Cartesian theory of emotions, and consciousness as a neural map of body states based on homeostatic processes, and internal organ state. . Emotion and Motivation. The controversies over free will, "free won't", Libet's experiment with EEG, and cognition and the brain.  James' idea of consciousness as a stream: Podcast at https://soundcloud.com/user-357765846/consciousness-the-biggest-mystery-in-science ASSIGNMENT: read https://philosophyisnotaluxury.com/2013/03/21/william-james-the-stream-of-consciousness-and-freewill/ and http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/jimmy11.htm 

WEEK 8 Review and Final Exam

This course is a survey of foundational topics such as the scientific status of biological psychology relative to evolution, genetics, mental health, medications, memory, consciousness, sensation and perception, personality, neuroscience and The biophysiological basis or aspects of behavior, stress and health, psychological disorders, cognition and consciousness will be examined. 

This course will emphasize the development of critical thinking methods. Don’t believe everything you read or hear! What is conventional wisdom today may be scoffed at as old tomorrow, and a generation later regarded as leading edge innovation.

Some of the specific questions we will examine include:

Do people have free will? Do our genes determine our behavior? What is the relevance of studies of identical vs fraternal twins separated at birth?

Can cognitive neuroscience explain human nature?

Are mental health problems disorders of genes or brain functioning?

When and why did people begin to theorize about the mind and human nature?

Will psychology in the future be a branch of genetics, neuroscience, and pharmacology?

How does evolution relate to psychology?

How do the mind and brain relate to each other? How do psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, and other “cognitive sciences” understand the “mind-body” problem?”

 Keep in mind some of the following themes, and reflect on:

• the status of biological psychology as a science, where people are viewed much as bio-psycho-social machines, compared to the historical background of psychology in literature, humanities, liberal arts and healing or medical arts

• the relationship of genes, physiology, and the brain to emotions, consciousness, cognition, and behavior

• Health psychology, psychosomatic phenomena, and coping with stress

• Psychological disorders and therapies using pharmacology

Other topics will be introduced, time permitting

Students should be able to understand, define and discuss basic concepts about the foundations and component disciplines of biological psychology.

The purpose of this course in biological psychology is to present the concepts, topics, principles, and issues in applied and theoretical psychology. Major areas will be described and analyzed, a historical overview introduced, and relationships to other fields such as genetics, evolution, neuroscience, psychopharmacology and healthcare will be established.  The relevance of biological psychology to practical everyday needs, to asking the “big questions” about human nature and biology, to health, and to industry will be discussed. The course objectives or goals include (but are not limited to) students being able to comprehend, analyze, and discuss major theories, findings and concepts in the following areas:

The nature of living systems

Genes relative to DNA, RNA, proteins and traits

Classical aka Mendelian vs modern views of genetics and heredity

Darwin and Wallace's theory of natural selection

Learning and the biological basis of learning

Life-Span Development, including aging and eldercare issues

Physiological Basis of Behavior (especially genetics, psychiatry, and clinical neuropsychology)

Cognition and the brain (including Sensation, Perception, Memory, and Consciousness)

Stress (including psychoneuroimmunology, and intellectual, social, physical and emotional health)

Psychological Disorders and treatments via psychopharmacology