Psychology & Neuroscience: What’s the difference?
Many people note that the only time they have ever heard of autism—-prior to their child’s being diagnosed with it—-is in an Intro to Psychology class. Autism, they learn, is a psychological disorder—-and then they hear about their child having a developmental disorder (i.e., autism). Adding to the confusion are more and more references to autism as a neurological–neurodevelopmental—neurobiological disorder. A parent finds herself reading research in a number of scientific disciplines including psychology, neuroscience, genetics, and much more, in addition to articles about education. A parent finds herself seeking appointments for her child with a developmental pediatrician, a pediatric neurologist, a neuropsychologist, a psychologist, a child psychiatrist, a BCBA……. the lists only seem to grow.
A recent Ask a Science Blogger post on a Cognitive Daily outlines where psychology and neuroscience differ, and where they overlap. Is psychology, indeed, still “relevant” now that we know so much more about the workings of the brain?
The main difference between psychology and neuroscience is the object of study: psychologists study behavior; neuroscientists study the nervous system. The disciplines overlap in an area usually referred to as the mind, the unseen “software” that controls behavior. But you can’t have a mind without a nervous system, and most particularly, a brain, so perhaps you could learn everything you need to know about psychology just by studying neuroscience. That said, studying only the brain to understand behavior will be slow going if you skip over psychology and its direct study of behavior. In our view, studying both psychology and neuroscience is the best way to understand the mind, behavior, and the nervous system.
…….
Yet human behavior itself is so complex that trying to understand it from an anatomical perspective alone simply doesn’t make sense. You wouldn’t try to learn how use a complicated computer program like Adobe Photoshop by taking the computer apart, or even by analyzing the lines of its computer code.
Precisely because “we can learn useful, important things about human nature without knowing a thing about what goes on in the brain,” we need psychology. By working in concert, “we can learn useful, important things about human nature without knowing a thing about what goes on in the brain.”
Perhaps rather than sigh over all the different ways there are of looking at autism, we can be glad these exist, for what each teaches us.
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POSTED IN: Neuroscience, Psychology, Science, Weblogs
17 opinions for Psychology & Neuroscience: What’s the difference?
mcewen
Apr 13, 2007 at 2:09 pm
The ‘multi-disciplinary’ the approach, perhaps ‘all the better’ the outcome - I hope.
Cheers
Shelbspeaks
Apr 13, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Autism: Every time you go for a flu shot or send your kids for a series of vaccinations, you open yourself and your loved ones to potential health dangers, warns a top neurosurgeon in his new report. autism is a risk for those who take mercury based vaccines.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Apr 13, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Dr. Russell Blaylock does seem also to have interests in nutrition therapy and “natural strategies for cancer patients.”
http://www.russellblaylockmd.com/
daedalus2u
Apr 13, 2007 at 4:19 pm
An objection I have to dividing this into multiple diciplines is that the specialists in the different diciplines feel they are talking about different things.
It is precisely like the blind men and the elephant.
http://www.wordinfo.info/words/index/info/view_unit/1/?letter=B&spage=3
The mind and the brain are not two objects, they are one object. A very, very complex object, but a single object none the less.
Rochelle
Apr 13, 2007 at 5:17 pm
… And, Dr. Blaylock has nooooo financial gain to make from this stunning announcement. (Does the $89 he makes, per subscription, go directly into his personal bank account or does it go first into a “business” one?)
And, if you order now, you can get Dr. Blaylock’s report on treating and avoiding cancer. Yes, Dr. Blaylock will give you the cure for cancer, a $100 value, free with your subscription to his report. John Best is standing by ready to take your order…
Kristina Chew, PhD
Apr 13, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Dr. Blaylock is making the rounds on many blogs with a similar comment……..
Thanks for that point, daedalus2u. I do feel like I’m stumbling along in the dark sometimes to try to figure things out…..more than appreciate good guides.
Phil
Apr 13, 2007 at 5:51 pm
I definitely agree with Daedalus. In a way - all these different disciplines are (in my opinion) a by product of the alarmist behaviour of the curebies like JBJ. It’s a great example of the harm such is thing is doing to proper education exactly because of the reasons Daedalus gave. It inhibits true understanding as a result - because parents who are looking to help their children cope end up feeling like a steel ball in a pinball machine. Naturally frustration follows and they became more vulnerable to quick and unproven “fixes” like chelation - which only muddies the waters even more because of chelation’s placebo effect. It’ll do something if there are intestinal problems and that may relieve some sensory overload - which obviously will help matters. But that’s just purely physical and ASD’s are not (for the most part) physical disorders. There are side effects - such as the running gait (I talk through experience) but that’s not part of the root problem.
I chuckled at Rochelle’s comment! I’ll have to ask how much JBJ is being paid to support Andrew Cutler and his band of NT “terrorists”. :)
Apple_M
Apr 14, 2007 at 2:17 pm
I think reason that we all take on this multi discipline approach is that no single discipline can explains ASD. until we have a unified theory that can explain the condition, we will all continue bounce around.
Each profession does there best to apply their theories to ASD but fail to see the whole picture.
As for quick unproven fixes well this is an amusing thing. Not even ABA is proven, how long are we expected to wait for any treatment or teaching method to be scientifically proven before trying them. We won’t wait. every second is precious.
I have yet to find a professional that will draw any link between GI problems and autism even though it seems to common to be a coincidence. I do like your sensory overload theory ,, its got the same ring to it as heavy metal detoxification or Chelation Therapy,, maybe you should set up a clinic!!
Phil
Apr 14, 2007 at 7:31 pm
Apple, the thing about ABA is that it doesn’t work for everyone - and for those it does the results are mixed. Like all things, it’s a tool that very much depends on how it’s used. Even Chelation falls into that category. It’s also about what one wants to achieve.
ABA is the treatment of “choice” in Canada (I put choice in inverted commas because of the attitude towards it by the Canadian government), but when it doesn’t work the cow manure hits the fan in a lot of ways - all because the tool is being used incorrectly. Michelle Dawson is a voice trying to correct that - and getting nowhere!
Sensory overload is a fact of life for those on the Spectrum, Apple. If you mean, set up a clinic to teach people how to avoid it (both autistics and NT’s) I’m all for it. But it needs the very understanding you spoke of - the unified theory.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Apr 14, 2007 at 10:39 pm
That is how I think of ABA, as a tool; I also think one has to think about to what end it is being used: Not for “recovery from autism,” but as a potentially effective teaching method. ABA teaching has worked well for Charlie with a lot of sensory reinforcement intermixed—-he seems to learn best when, inbetween sitting at his desk, he can jump on a trampoline, ride a scooter, go for a walk, roll on a therapy ball.
I think parents can become taken up with the notion that autism is a biological disorder because 1) this suggests that some pill or treatment might “cure the autism” and 2) such a notion makes it very clear that nothing a parent did could have caused autism. Even with all the physical symptoms addressed, a child still needs to be taught—still needs to be educated—a long and slow road for all of us.
Zaecus
Apr 15, 2007 at 4:20 am
“I think reason that we all take on this multi discipline approach is that no single discipline can explains ASD. until we have a unified theory that can explain the condition, we will all continue bounce around.
Each profession does there best to apply their theories to ASD but fail to see the whole picture.”
Unified theory…
Humans are complex organisms, and if we ever come up for a unified theory that simple explains us… I see that as raising ethical concerns the likes of which will make the ethical concerns around harnessing the atom seem like a debate over how a playground game of kickball should be played.
And we _are_ talking about a unified theory of humanity. The idea that autistics are somehow ’simpler’ or more homogeneous as a group is a cognitive fallacy. We are simply another expression (to whatever degree) of what it means to be a human, with all of the complexity included in that.
It’s just that the endorsed, organized, and accepted ways of raising a child to be an adult don’t work with us as they would be expected to work with a neurotypical child. But, honestly, how many times has a parent of a _neurotypical_ child made mention of having to, at some point, “through out the book”?
Harold L Doherty
Apr 15, 2007 at 6:12 am
“It’s just that the endorsed, organized, and accepted ways of raising a child to be an adult don’t work with us as they would be expected to work with a neurotypical child.”
Who is “us” Zaecus? You are not presuming to speak for lower functioning autistic persons with limited understanding of language are you? If so, you would seem to be contradicting your earlier comment in this post, with which I agree that:
“The idea that autistics are somehow ’simpler’ or more homogeneous as a group is a cognitive fallacy. “
Phil
Apr 15, 2007 at 6:48 am
Zeacus, as much as you make a reasonable point - don’t assume that “unified theory” means one theory to cover the lot. It can’t (as you say).
The “unified theory” means a group of theories, properly researched and understood and projected as a block with the flexibility required inserted accordingly. This is what understanding brings - all the theories together into one understanding. Not one theory - one understanding.
It’s why there’s no single answer to the age old question; “What is the Meaning of Life?”
(Unless you believe Douglas Adams - then it’s 42 and it’s still wrong!!)
Kristina Chew, PhD
Apr 15, 2007 at 8:40 am
Even if one might follow “endorsed, organized, and accepted ways of raising a child to be an adult,” this does not mean that a child will have a “neurotypical” life, or wish to……..
“Not one theory–one understanding”: Small shades of e pluribus unum, perhaps, or rather e diversibus unum.
daedalus2u
Apr 15, 2007 at 11:49 am
The notion that there can be one “simple” theory to explain ASDs is completely mistaken.
Nothing about human physiology is “simple”. Nothing about the brain is simple. Nothing about human genetics is simple, nothing about human development is simple, nothing about human interactions is simple, nothing about humans is simple at all, other than their “need” to have simple answers for complex issues.
The problem isn’t that there can’t be a single theory, but rather that such a theory cannot be simple.
There is a unified hypothesis of ASDs, the “low NO hypothesis of ASDs”. It is not “simple”. It cannot be explained in a sound bite, in a sentence, in a paragraph, or even in hundreds of pages.
NO is involved in thousands of different pathways, all of which are coupled, all of which are non-linear. A system of a large number of coupled non-linear parameters with feedback and hysteresis cannot be said to be simple.
The low NO hypothesis does explain GI problems because the enteric nervous system has a lot of nitrergic neurons in it, and when you mess up basal NO levels the enteric neural network doesn’t work “right”.
Similarly, sensory overload has to do with connectivity in the brain and closeness to the percolation threshold. Low NO lowers connectivity, increasing sensitivity until you reach the percolation threshold below which it falls apart, as in a meltdown.
A problem is that “experts” are only expert in their dicipline of expertise, which naturally they think is the most “important” dicipline, and so has “the answer”, while all other diciplines must be wrong. That reasoning is ego driven, not fact or hypothesis driven.
By what reasoning do we think that the way to understand reality is by dividing it up into different categories as represented by the different diciplines?
Phil Schwarz
Apr 15, 2007 at 12:27 pm
This sounds very much like what worked well for Jeremy as a preschooler. It so happened that Jeremy took like a fish to water, to informal, flexible, very much child-directed discrete-trial-format presentation of preschool-age pre-academics — the kind of stuff that he wasn’t absorbing in a traditional preschool environment. We made it clear to his program directors and teaching staff that our goal was skill acquisition on his part, not making him look more like non-autistic peers.
I think skill acquisition, rather than normalization, is one key goal discriminant that should be applied to “intervention”/education programs marketed as “ABA”.
Another — further reaching — is that the end result of a program’s agenda regarding behavior, should be for the child himself/herself to acquire the ability to analyze behavior, both his/her own and that of others, in terms of antecedents and consequences, and to use that analytic ability to navigate a non-autistic world.
And finally, a good program should help a child build the kind of self-esteem s/he will need, to live as a minority among a majority that often lacks understanding and tolerance. Non-autistic conventions and expectations around social interaction, allocation of attention, allocation of time, aesthetic and sensory preferences, and so on, should not be taught as “right” (and deviations from them as “wrong”). Instead, they should be taught as the ways and expectations of the majority — and necessary to understand and interact with as such.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Apr 15, 2007 at 11:15 pm
“By what reasoning do we think that the way to understand reality is by dividing it up into different categories as represented by the different diciplines?”
daedalu2u: Perhaps the “dividing up” into different categories occurred because that was the easiest, or perhaps the most efficient, way for some to understand things by making them simple (although they are far from simple, to be sure).
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