BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES - Universitatea de Medicină şi Farmacie

example of how important the nervous system is in your behavior is
meeting a friend.
First, the visual information of your eyes is sent to your brain by
nervous cells. There the information is interpreted and translated into a
signal to take action. Finally the brain sends a command to your voice or
to another action system like muscles or glands. For example, you may
start walking towards him. Your nervous system enables this rapid
recognition and action.
There are three general functions of the nervous system in man
and animals:
1. Sensing specific information about external and internal
conditions (in the example above, this is seeing your friend).
2. Integrating that information (this is the understanding of the
information coming from the eyes).
3. Issuing commands for a response from the muscles or glands
(this is the reaction of walking towards him).
The nervous system provides us the ability to perceive, understand
and react to environmental events. That is why the nervous system is so
extremely important for human behavior.
Genetic influences, the role of genes on behavior
How much of the behavior is accounted for by genetic factors or
heritability? This question is adresed by behavioral genetics - a field of
research in psychology which began in England with Sir Francis Galton
and his study of the inheritance of genius in families. He discovered that
genius 'runs in families' and concluded that it is to a significant degree a
heritable behavioral trait. Since Galton a lot of people tried to prove that
genetics play an important role in many aspects of behavior. Those people
proved that complex behaviors related to personality, psychopathology and
cognition are all influenced to some degree by genetics. They have also
found that genetics alone is never enough to explain behavior, because
behavior is also influenced by the enviroment.
Today, most psychologists believe that behavior reflects both
genetic and environmental aspects. They try to explain variability in a trait
like intelligence or height or musicality in terms of the genetic and
enviromental differences among people within that population.
Effect of the production of hormones on behavior
The word hormone is derived from the Greek word hormao and
means to excite or stir into action. Hormones are chemicals secreted into
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