An interesting virtue of being a human being is the ability to perceive and thereby act which defines our behavior. There are myriad ways to study our behavior, and one of the most practical ways is to observe the ways in which physiological events affect behaviour. Physiological psychology is the study of human behavior through physiological impact.

2. A SAGE
White Paper
www.sagepub.in
How Are You
Different
from a Rock?
Physiological Psychology

3. How Are You Different from a Rock?
Let’s start with a rock. Yes—a rock. How Are You Different from a Rock?
What is the difference between a rock and a living being? Well, the rock is a thing. It
doesn’t do anything. It just sits there until something else pushes against it and moves it.
Living organisms—like humans—are different. Living beings are not inanimate objects
that must be pushed and pulled in order to move. Organisms can regulate themselves—
they are self-regulating systems. At their most basic, living organisms are those that can
modify their own internal processes in response to changes in the environment. A rock
can’t do that.
In fact, a rock can’t do anything. It is always at rest until some force comes along to
move it. An organism, however, is never at rest. It is always active—always in process. For
example, warm-blooded organisms must expend energy simply to maintain their body
temperatures at a constant level. In humans, 98.6°F does not reflect the temperature of the
human body at rest; it is the temperature that is actively produced by self-maintaining
biological systems. And so, while an organism is always actively engaged in some sort of
dynamic activity, a rock just sits there.
But why? Both the rock and organism are made of physical material. What makes the
organism able to regulate itself while the rock just sits there, unable to do anything?
The answer must have something to do with how the carbon-based systems that make
up living beings are organized. In fact, the words organize and organism have common
origins. If this is so, we must ask, how organisms are organized that makes them capable
of doing, experiencing, wanting, or thinking?
That is what this book is about.
Even the simplest living organisms “do” something. Consider the lowest of the low—
a common bacterium. Bacteria are single-celled creatures with no nervous systems.
Nonetheless, they are capable of “moving themselves.” How is this possible? Take, for
example, the bacterium Escherichia coli (E. Coli), which lives, among other places, in the
intestines of mammals. Its capacity to move relies upon three basic systems: a receptor
system that detects the presence of different types of chemicals in the environment; a
flagellum system (a “tail” i.e. is able to turn in one or another direction) that moves the
organism; and a chemical pathway that connects the two.
In the absence of certain chemicals in the environment, organized chemical processes
within the organism continuously stimulate the flagellum to alternate between a series
of clockwise and counter-clockwise movements. These shifting movements cause the
organism to move in a series of random directions. These random movements continue
Physiological Psychology

4.
Physiological Psychology
until—by chance—the organism enters an environment containing particular types of
chemicals (i.e., chemoattractants such as amino acids, glucose, and oxygen). When
E. coli’s receptors detect the presence of chemoattractors, the internal processes that stim-
ulate the clockwise movement of the flagellum are inhibited and only counter-clockwise
flagellar movements are produced. This causes the organism to move steadily forward in
the direction of chemoattractants.
And so, the simple E. coli changes the direction of its movement depending upon
changes in environmental conditions: E. coli is a self-regulation system. It even does this
without a nervous system.
As we move up the evolutionary scale, organisms become more complex. Their activity
is mediated by increasingly complex interactions between internal (endogenous) and
external (endogenous) processes; they become increasingly able to learn and retain infor-
mation from their interactions with the environment. They become able to adapt to the
world in increasingly sophisticated ways. Their actions become increasingly mediated by
psychological capacities.
Psychological processes are those that are mediated by the meaning that events have
for an organism. These include, but are not limited to, the capacities to be conscious
and experience the world; to feel pleasure, pain and other emotions; to relate to other
organisms; to know and represent the world; to think; to use symbols; to form identities;
and to act on the basis of how they identify themselves in relation to others.
All psychological processes arise from biological processes that are complexly organized.
It follows that to fully understand psychological processes, we need to understand how
they are represented in the biophysical interactions between the brain, body, and world.
For example, when we remember our fifth birthday party, some basis for reconstructing
an image of that event must be represented in the processes that operate at the level of the
brain, body, and physical world.
But this is not to say that we can understand psychological processes—consciousness,
experience, hunger, thirst, remembering, seeking intimacy with others, dreaming, creating
a self, and so forth—by reducing them to biological processes. Although a full understanding
of psychological processes will require an understanding of their biological substrata, we
cannot understand the biology of psychological functioning unless we have good theories
of psychological functioning itself.
You can understand why this is so by performing a simple thought experiment. Imagine
that astronauts discovered populations of Martians living in underground colonies on
Mars. Imagine that you were brought to Mars by a Martian neuroscientist who happened
to be able to speak English. The scientist brings you into a laboratory and shows you a
sophisticated brain imaging machine. The scientist is able to show you a series of detailed
pictures showing the precise areas of the brain that are activated when Martian subjects
feel sood—an experience that occurs among Martians but not Earthlings. Proudly, the
Martian scientist says: “After many years, we have finally identified sood in the Martian
brain! This is what sood looks like in the brain. This is what happens when Martians
feel sood!”
What would you think? Would you have any sense at all of what it would mean for a
Martian to sood?
The answer, of course, is no. Unless you were a Martian—with the biology of a Martian,
the experiences of a Martian, and the culture (if that is the right word) of a Martian—you

5.
could not possibly understand what it would mean to feel “sood.” Without the capacity
to experience sood for yourself, and to have some sense of what Martians mean when they
speak of sood, the images of what Martian brains look like when Martians feel sood would
have no meaning for you.1
If we want to have a complete understanding of human psychology, we need to
understand how our psychological processes are mediated by biological processes. But
that doesn’t mean we can reduce psychology to biology. Good neuroscience relies on
good psychology. With accessible clarity, conceptual depth, and scholarly expertise, this
book will show you how to understand the complex biological underpinnings of our even
more complex psychological life.
Physiological Psychology by Meetu Khosla
Physiological Psychology
-From the Foreword by Michael F. Mascolo, PhD, Professor, Department of Psychology,
Merrimack College.

6. About the
Author
Meetu Khosla, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Daulat Ram College,
University of Delhi, where she has been teaching physiological psychology for the past 20 years. She is
presently the head of her department. Her field of specialization is neuro-affective sciences. Her research
focuses on the neurocognitive correlates of affect, coping, resilience, health, and well-being across cultures.
Dr Khosla received the Shastri IndoCanadian Fellowship (2012) as a visiting professor to Canada, the
Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship (2013) as a visiting lecturer to USA, the ICSSR Fellowship (2013) as a visiting
professor to France, the Erasmus Mundus Fellowship (2014) as a visiting professor to Poland, the ICSSR
Fellowship (2017) as a visiting professor to France, and a visiting professor to the University of Warsaw
(2016). She has more than 40 research publications in scientific journals and more than 100 presentations
in national/international conferences, seminars, workshops, and universities all around the world. She is on
the editorial boards of SAGE and Springer as a reviewer.