Contact: Sammy McDavid
STARKVILLE, Miss.--The process by which biological systems affect human behavior is the subject of a new collegiate textbook by two Mississippi State psychologists.
"Biological Psychology," a release of New York-based Worth Publishers, is the collaborative work of Stephen B. Klein and B. Michael Thorne. Klein is a professor and head of the university's psychology department; Thorne, a professor emeritus and the department's former graduate coordinator.
Within the book's 579 pages and 15 chapters, the authors focus on an exploration of the nervous system, effects of psychoactive drugs, wakefulness and sleep, sexual development and behavior, and learning and memory, among other major topic areas.
"Biological psychology is the study of the influences on behavior of biological systems, especially the nervous system," explained Klein.
"If the brain is the organ of the mind and the source of all behavior, and if the definition of psychology is the study of behavior and the mind, then it stands to reason that biological psychology is fundamental to everything in psychology," he added.
Added Thorne: "What is the organ of learning? Where are memories stored? The answer to both is the central nervous system, which is the brain and spinal cord.
"For instance, when longtime advice columnist Ann Landers wrote that sex is all in your mind, she was correct," Thorne continued. "You cannot fully comprehend the human sexual response without knowing something about the nervous system's control of it."
Klein, a doctoral graduate of Rutgers University and a specialist in learning and memory, is the author of six previous textbooks. Among them is "Learning: Principles and Applications" (McGraw-Hill), which has been adopted by several hundred universities and translated into Spanish.
Thorne, whose doctorate was completed at Louisiana State University, has focused his research in the areas of biological psychology, history of psychology and the teaching of psychology. He is the senior author of "Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences" (McGraw-Hill) and "Connections in the History and Systems of Psychology" (Houghton-Mifflin).
NEWS EDITORS/DIRECTORS: For additional information about the book or the subject of biological psychology, contact the authors at 662-325-3202. Dr. Klein also can be reached at sbk1@ra.msstate.edu; Dr. Thorne, at bmt2@ra.msstate.edu.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.