Biological Psychology by Michael J. Hove and Steven A. Martinez consists of a combination of original content and materials compiled and adapted from public domain material and other Open Education Resources (OER) such as the Noba Project and OpenStax books. Specific attributions are shown in each chapter.

Creating this free Open Education Resource was motivated by seeing students struggle to pay for textbooks. Many of our students would delay buying materials until their paycheck arrived, others would try to succeed in the class without the materials, and others would have to choose between buying food and classroom materials. We hope that this OER will lessen students’ financial strain and help make class more accessible and inclusive.

We have been careful to be accurate and up to date in this textbook, but like any book, errors and outdated information can sometimes occur. With a web-based book, we can periodically update the book. If you have a suggestion for a correction, a comment, or general feedback, please email: BiologicalPsychology_OpenText@gmail.com. We will monitor that email and make minor edits to the book. If you are a teacher and use the book, we’d love to hear from you. Please let us know what aspects of the book you find useful or appealing, and what aspects you find less so (critical feedback is helpful for improving future editions). We also plan to compile teaching resources such as slides and assignments that can accompany the book.

We first released Biological Psychology in February 2024, and released an updated version in August 2024. The updated version added a new chapter on Learning and Memory (Ch 8); revamped the Hormones chapter (Ch 6) to include sections on endocrine disruptors and the biopsych of gender, sex, and sexual orientation; additional info on treatments of Psychological Disorders (Ch 12); and stylistic improvements throughout.

Acknowledgements

We’re thankful for comments and feedback on earlier drafts of chapters from: Chris Adams, Elizabeth Adkins-Regan, Michelle Cromwell, Daneen Deptula, Guillaume Dumas, Lena Ficco, Suresh Krishna, Aaron Kucyi, Jannette McMenamy, Hildy Schilling, Tom Schilling, Eve Valera, and Koene Van Dijk.

MJH worked on this project while on sabbatical in Montreal, where he was supported by a Fulbright Fellowship and was hosted by McGill University, the University of Montreal, the Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music (CRBLM), and the International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research (BRAMS).

This project was supported by the grant initiative Remixing Open Textbooks through an Equity Lens (ROTEL) from the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education. The ROTEL Project is funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE).

We thank the ROTEL team including Barbara Ambos, Marilyn Billings, Vicky Gavin, Millie Gonzales, Jackie Kremer, Minh Le, Richard Lizotte, and Connie Strittmatter.

About the authors

Michael J. Hove is an associate professor of psychology at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts. He received a PhD in psychology at Cornell and held research positions at the Max Planck Institute and Harvard Medical School. In addition to Biological Psychology, he teaches Sensation and Perception, Cognitive Neuroscience, Stats and Research Methods, and psychology seminars on the Science of Meditation, Music and the Brain, and Psychedelics and Mental Health. His research interests include rhythm, music and movement, and altered states of consciousness. In his spare time, he enjoys hiking, playing music and ice hockey, and hanging with his family. When his 4- and 6-year-old boys had a hard time sleeping, reading a few paragraphs from this book would put them right to sleep. Hopefully it’s not so sleep inducing for you.

Steven Martinez is a graduate student in Psychology and Neuroscience at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He completed his BS at Fitchburg State University and held research positions at Yale University, the University of California San Francisco, and the San Francisco VA Medical Center. As a graduate student, Steven is studying how digital media habits influence decision-making and how rewarding and threatening properties of motivation impact memory. In his free time, he is most likely playing soccer or exploring Philly.

License and Citation

Biological Psychology by Michael J Hove and Steven A. Martinez is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_US.

Sample APA citation for this book:

Hove, M. J., & Martinez, S. A. (2024). Biological Psychology. ROTEL (Remixing Open Textbooks with an Equity Lens) Project. https://rotel.pressbooks.pub/biologicalpsychology/

Cover Art

“The Kiss” by Jeroen Blommaert (CC BY-SA 4.0) was in the 2021 Brain Art Competition. Here is Dr. Blommaert’s caption for the entry: “Cancer complicates about 1 in 1000 pregnancies. Luckily, we recently found that treatment during pregnancy doesn’t need to impair the neurodevelopment of the child (Blommaert et al. 2020), adding to the growing evidence that cancer treatment during pregnancy is possible.”