Neurobiology of Psychological Functions

Having discussed the structure and functions of the brain, we shall now look at specific psychological functions and comprehend the role of brain regulating such functions. We shall concentrate on four major topics of interest of psychologists—learning, memory, emotion and personality. The elaboration of each of these topics is preceded by recapitulating the detailed discussion on the same topic in the course Basic Psychological Processes. Further, the details are based on the findings from different allied areas like electrophysiology, neuropsychology and neuroimaging.

Learning: Recapitulation

Learning brings forth moderately enduring change in the behaviour through experience. Learning primarily involves formation of associations and relationship. The input demanding a response is called stimulus (S) and the action made to such input is called response (R). This S-R relationship has been widely talked about in psychology. A stimulus could be anything; an event, a situation, a condition, a signal or a cue. Further, responses could either be readily observable or not readily evident. The former is referred to as overt behaviour whereas the later is called covert behaviour.

The illustration below describes the process of classical conditioning.