Biochemistry In Psychology

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30975, 3 February 1966, Page 1

Biochemistry In Psychology

“What is a mind? What is normal behaviour? How can we treat the abnormal until we know what is normal and exactly how the very complicated organism we call the body works?” asked Dr. R. W. Russell, professor of psychology at Indiana University, in Christchurch yesterday.

“The massive search for these answers is the reason why nothing very spectacular has happened in psychology in recent years,” he said. As visiting Erskine fellow at the University of Canterbury for three weeks. Dr. Russell is explaining some of his work with responses induced through biochemistry.

Dr. Russell said i that as a young man he studied physiology, chemistry, and physics, and did not take up psychology until post-graduate years when he became convinced that “events 'in the body as a whole” profoundly affected human behaviour. Early in the 1950's a major “break-through" in mental illness came with the discovery

of powerful psycho-active drugs—both tranquilisers and energisers. They had revolutionised treatment of the mentally ill to a stage where barred windows and chains were virtually unheard of. But these drugs were discovered empirically—quite by chance. Even though their beneficial effects were known, their exact structure and their precise action still required an enormous amount of research, Dr. Russell said. Indeed, the action of thousands of neurons which carried information in every act of staying alive, thinking, moving, and comparing new stimuli with stored experience was still obscure. Dr. Russell said one essenlai thing was to “decode” some of these messages and responses. It seemed that the nature of a species and many of its instincts were stored biochemically even before an organism was bom. His own recent work was an investigation of the act of drinking water—what prompted thirst, what governed the intake, and what mental processes were involved.

Tiny tubes were inserted in the brain of live rats and certain chemical substances were injected. Artificially these caused the rats to drink. When they were withdrawn, drinking ceased. It was clearly established that by genetic-wiiy-determined signals from the brain, the rats “turned off” drinking long before the water reached the tissues needingit. “If we can measure these reactions in a simple process we are on the way to being able to study major aspects of the coding system,” said Dr. Russell. “You will see why a wide range of scientists (in my own team biochemists, physiological psychologists, and pharmacologists) are involved in painstaking work which will take years to complete. Until we understand fully normal behaviour we can not fully understand abnormal behaviour. There is nothing simple about this,” said Dr. Russell.