ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a collection of cutting-edge reviews of different areas of psychobiological research, rather than a textbook of psychobiology. It identifies the domain of psychobiology, and some of the issues arising within psychobiological research, such as causality, and the relationship of psychobiology to other academic domains. A traditional starting point says that psychobiology is concerned with the biological correlates of any process or function that could be described as falling within the bounds of psychology as a subject discipline. The chapter also gives the relationship of neurobiological processes to psychological phenomena, psychobiology may incorporate the use of animal studies as a form of research. The human nervous system, incorporating the brain, functions by means of processes that are essentially biological in nature, with the processes around neurotransmission and the communication between the nervous system and other systems and structures within the body, such as the endocrine system and musculature, being of particular importance.
