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The Neurobiological Foundations of Behavior: Environmental Challenge and Response

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Part of the book series: Critical Issues in Psychiatry ((CIPS))

Abstract

This chapter is particularly addressed to those readers who do not have a background in medical or biological science. It offers first a brief selective survey of neurobiological and biobehavioral research which we hope will provide a useful technical background to our discussion in Chapter 7 of the neurobiology of mood. Subsequently we introduce the reader to the literature on the psychophysiology of environmental challenge.

Admitting that vital phenomena rest upon physicochemical activities, which is the truth, the essence of the problem is not thereby cleared up, for it is no chance encounter of physicochemical phenomena which constructs each being according to a pre-existing plan and produces the admirable subordination and the harmonious concert of organic activity. There is an arrangement in the living being, a kind of regulated activity, which must never be neglected because it is in truth the most striking characteristic of living beings. . . .

Vital phenomena possess indeed their rigorously determined physicochemical conditions; but at the same time they subordinate themselves and succeed one another in a pattern and according to law which pre-exists. They repeat themselves with order, regularity, constancy, and they harmonize in such a manner as to bring about the organization and growth of the individual animal or plant. Claude Bernard1 Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1865)

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© 1984 Springer-Verlag, New York

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Whybrow, P.C., Akiskal, H.S., McKinney, W.T. (1984). The Neurobiological Foundations of Behavior: Environmental Challenge and Response. In: Mood Disorders. Critical Issues in Psychiatry. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2729-5_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2729-5_6

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-9692-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-2729-5

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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