Читать книгу Abnormal Psychology - William J. Ray - Страница 44

As we explore together the themes of behavior and experience, neuroscience contributions, and evolutionary perspectives as related to psychopathology, you will see that we will move across a variety of levels of analysis ranging from culture to genetics. Higher-level understandings include culture and society as well as our social relationships. From there, we can look at what makes up the social level as well as the individual level, which includes our actions and our experiences. We can then ask what makes up the individual in terms of sensory, motor, emotional, and cognitive systems. We can examine each of these levels as it influences our behavior and experience. One can ask how each of these systems works and look at the physiological processes that make up our central and peripheral nervous systems. This will take us to the cortical network level, and you will see how neurons and their connections form the basis of information transfer and processing. The most basic level you will be introduced to in this book is the genetic level, which in turn will require us to understand how environmental conditions influence genetic processes. You will also learn about a related process, epigenetics, in which genes can be turned on or off by the environment, and these mechanisms can be passed on to future generations without actually changing the basic genetic structure.

levels of analysis: examination of psychopathology ranging from culture and society at a higher level to the individual at a middle level and physiology and genetics at the lower levels

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