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Presentation: Neurotransmission

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  • Presentation: Neurotransmission

The following presentation supports the study of neurotransmission.

You are not expected to learn all of the material in this presentation.  When using this study for revision, remember to:

  • Focus on key concepts
  • Learn 2 - 3 studies that you feel you understand.  You may also, instead, learn studies from the textbook or from your teacher.
  • Focus on key evaluation points

Neurotransmission as an explanation of human behaviour

  • Research on neurotransmission can only be done indirectly. We are reliant on fMRI technology which means that the limitations of such techniques are relevant to the evaluation of many studies of neurotransmission.
  • One of the key strengths of neurotransmission theories is that they have led to successful treatments for certain behaviours.  Successful drug treatments have been developed for psychological disorders.
  • There is experimental research that supports the role of neurotransmission in behaviour.  These experiments can be replicated to establish the reliability of the findings.
  • However, many of these studies are animal research. This means that we cannot guarantee that neurotransmitters play the same role in human behaviour as we see in animal subjects.
  • Because of ethical considerations, much of the research on humans is correlational in nature.  This means that we cannot establish a cause and effect relationship.  For example, in the case of depression, bidirectional ambiguity is a problem.  We do not know if a deficit in dopamine and serotonin causes depression or whether these deficits are a result of depression.
  • The argument that neurotransmission is the cause of behaviour is reductionist. Although a reductionist argument may be good in the study of memory since such arguments could potentially lead to positive strategies for helping people with memory impairment, explaining a complex behaviour such as falling in love as a "neurochemical cocktail" may be considered an oversimplification of human behaviour - ignoring cognitive and sociocultural factors in the behaviour.

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