Psychobiology Texts (Was Re: Diff between Neuroscience and Psychobiology)

[James Blackburn]

In article <3odld2$kvu at engnews2.eng.sun.com>,
Will Nelson <wnelson at Eng.Sun.COM> wrote:

>There was a thread in this group recently that asked for recommendations
>about good textbooks in neuroscience. I'm plowing through "From Neuron
>to Brain" right now, and wow, a lot has happened in the thirteen years
>since I changed careers! But on the other hand, it stops short of
>the stuff that I'm really interested in, which is behavior.
>
>Are there any good texts that concentrate on the behavioral side of
>things, in what I will call physiological psychology, which I suspect
>is pretty close to psychobiology? Emphasis should be on hunger, thirst,
>reward, sleep, behavioral psychopharmacology, etc.

   The most widely used psychobiology texts around are _Biopsychology_, 
by J.P.J. Pinel, and _Physiology of Behavior_ by N.R. Carlson.  Both  
have fairly extensive coverage of behaviour. 
   For a more neuroscience-oriented text, I was using Dowling's "From 
Neurons to Networks" but am gleefully discarding it for next year in 
favour of _Essentials of Neural Sceince and Behavior_ by E.R. Kandel, 
J.H. Schwartz, and T.M. Jessell.  (It's the undergrad version of Kandel 
and Schwartz's classic _Principles of Neural Science_.)  The title is 
somewhat misleading, this is a neuroscience text, the coverage of 
behaviour is rather limited though of generally high calibre.  It does 
have extensive coverages of sensory physiology (the only area that both 
psychobiology and neuroscience texts always seem to cover in 
more-than-enough detail).  My biggest problems with it are its 
insufficient coverage of research methodology (Pinel's text has an 
excellent chapter on how to relate brain to behaviour) and its relatively 
superficial coverage of gross neuroanatomy.

Jim Blackburn
blackbur at mcmail.mcmaster.ca
FAX (905) 529-6225