Biological Psychology

Citation

Kalat, J. W. (2024). Biological Psychology (14th ed.). Cengage Learning.

Chapter Summary

The book has 14 chapters and two appendices. The publisher describes the text as written for psychology students as well as biology and pre-med majors, and says each chapter is divided into modules, each with learning objectives and a list of key terms. The former introduction to the book now forms the first module of Chapter 1. The chapter order moves from cells and synapses through anatomy, development and the senses to movement, motivated behaviour, cognition and, at the end, psychopathology.

Chapters 1–3: The Cellular Foundations of Behavior; Synapses; Anatomy and Research Methods

The opening three chapters cover the building blocks: nerve cells, the synapses between them, and the anatomy of the nervous system together with the research methods used to study it. They supply the vocabulary that every later chapter relies on, and Chapter 1 also contains the introductory module on the field itself.

Chapter 4: Genetics, Development, and Plasticity

The chapter title pairs genetics with development and plasticity, that is, how the nervous system is built and how it changes with experience.

Chapters 5–7: Vision; Hearing, the Mechanical Senses, and the Chemical Senses; Movement

Vision has a chapter of its own. Hearing, the mechanical senses and the chemical senses share the second, and movement closes the sequence on the sensory and motor systems. Among the updates the publisher lists are age-related auditory changes, pain mechanisms in women and men, the olfactory effects of COVID-19 and cortical cells that control eye movements, without assigning them to particular chapters.

Chapters 8–11: Wakefulness and Sleep; Internal Regulation; Reproductive Behaviors; Emotional Behaviors

Four chapters on behaviour driven by internal states: sleep and waking, the regulation of the body's internal conditions, reproductive behaviour, and emotion. The publisher's list of updates also includes the brain's response to drug addiction and misleading weight-loss and mental-enhancement supplements.

Chapters 12–13: Learning, Memory, and Intelligence; Cognitive Functions

These two chapters turn to learning, memory and intelligence and then to cognitive functions. Among the publisher's updates are new research indicating that the hippocampus and cortex store memories in parallel rather than the hippocampus handing them over to the cortex, and expanded discussion of the philosophical problem of mind and brain.

Chapter 14: Psychopathology

The final chapter is titled Psychopathology. The publisher's updates include two explanations of why antidepressants raise serotonin in synapses quickly but take weeks to produce behavioural benefits, and new content on autism and the effect of fever.

Appendices A and B: Brief, Basic Chemistry; Society for Neuroscience Policies on the Use of Animals and Human Subjects in Research

Appendix A is a brief chemistry primer, and Appendix B covers the Society for Neuroscience policies on the use of animals and human subjects in research.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–4: Cells, Synapses, Anatomy, Genes

• Cellular foundations: the nerve cell as the unit of behaviour.
• Synapses: where neurons communicate with one another.
• Research methods: the tools used to study the nervous system, taught together with anatomy.
• Plasticity: the nervous system's capacity to change through development and experience.

Chapters 5–7: Senses and Movement

• Vision: the visual system, with a chapter to itself.
• Mechanical and chemical senses: hearing, touch-related senses, taste and smell.
• Movement: the control of action.

Chapters 8–14: Behaviour, Cognition and Disorder

• Wakefulness and sleep, internal regulation, reproductive behaviours and emotional behaviours: the motivated and emotional chapters.
• Learning, memory and intelligence: and the cognitive functions that follow.
• Psychopathology: the closing treatment of disorders.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Learning aids built into every module. The publisher states that each module opens with learning objectives and closes with key terms carrying page references, thought questions and multiple-choice review items. Stop and Check quizzes inside each module give immediate feedback, with answers printed upside down below the questions.
• Hands-on activities. More than 30 Try It Yourself exercises illustrate phenomena such as the blind spot, motion blindness and binocular rivalry.
• A deliberately streamlined text. The publisher says the author keeps the text as streamlined as possible because students who try to learn too many things at once forget what they have learned, and a simpler citation style has trimmed the reference pages. It also states that results that were difficult to replicate have been deleted.
• A current research base. The edition adds more than 500 new references, most dating from 2019 to 2022, and highlights nine contemporary researchers alongside historic figures such as Cajal, Sherrington and Hebb.

Limitations

• Length. The International Edition is listed at 624 pages, so a one-term course will need to be selective about which chapters to assign.
• Compressed treatments. Hearing, the mechanical senses and the chemical senses share one chapter, while vision has its own, and psychopathology receives a single closing chapter, so the structure limits depth on the other senses and on disorders.
• Citation style. The edition uses the style of the journal Neuron, a variation of Harvard, rather than APA, so students writing APA-style papers will need to reformat references.

Where It Fits in the Course

Kalat is a full-length undergraduate textbook: longer than a compact introduction and far shorter than a reference work. Winn and Grealy's Biopsychology: The Basics is a concise introduction written for newcomers and works as a gentler first pass before Kalat. Pinel and Barnes's Biopsychology is the closest alternative in purpose and scope, an undergraduate textbook moving from neuroanatomy and methods through sensory and motor systems to sleep, eating, sex, memory, emotion and psychiatric disorders; a student can choose either as the main text and use the other for a second explanation of difficult topics.

Passingham's Cognitive Neuroscience: A Very Short Introduction is a short account of how mental functions are linked to brain activity and complements Kalat's later chapters. Nelson and Kriegsfeld's An Introduction to Behavioral Endocrinology goes deeper into hormones than Kalat's treatment of internal regulation and reproductive behaviour. Kandel and colleagues' Principles of Neural Science is the comprehensive reference to consult for detail beyond any undergraduate text.

How to Use This Book

Kalat suits psychology majors in a required biological psychology or behavioural neuroscience course, and students in biology or pre-medical programmes who want a psychology-oriented account. Appendix A is available for readers who need a refresher in chemistry, which suggests the text does not assume much chemistry background.

Read Chapters 1 to 3 first and carefully, since the cell, synapse and anatomy vocabulary recurs throughout. Chapters 4 to 7 form the next block and can be taken in order. After that, the chapters on sleep, internal regulation, reproduction and emotion can be read in any order that matches the syllabus, with Chapters 12 and 13 on learning and cognition and Chapter 14 on psychopathology last.

Use the module structure for study: read the learning objectives first, work through the Stop and Check quizzes as you go, and use the key-terms lists to rehearse. Try the Try It Yourself activities as they appear, especially in the sensory chapters, since the publisher describes them as making concepts easier to understand and remember.