Hello Everyone,
My name is Tim Parker and I have just retired from 37 years of teaching at the Augustana Campus of the University of Alberta. I have two goals for this blog. The first is to introduce you to my book on what addiction is and how it changes the brain. I have spent a few years writing this book and you will find that it contains numerous end notes which identify the source articles used to support the information contained in the book.
The second goal is to provide articles on the many interesting discoveries in psychology that I have learned about, and taught about in my years of teaching. My area is biological psychology, more commonly known as brain and behaviour. I will be drawing on the many psychology courses that I have taught.
I start with a basic course which is titled Introduction to the Brain and Nervous System. Following this I have taught several follow-up courses. These include Human Neuropsychology, a seminar course on the Physiology of Sleep, Emotion and Stress, a course on Psychological Disorders, a course on Cognition and Memory, a course on Sensation and Perception and a senior course on the Neurobiology of Learning Memory and Addiction.
In addition to these courses I have also written a text book called Foundations of Biological Psychology (see the link on this website – posted soon). I’ll also be drawing on this to provide articles on many aspects of brain and behaviour.
Future articles will be on such topics as stress, sleep, anxiety, fear, schizophrenia, OCD, brain lateralization, and sex differences in brain function, just to name a few. I’ll also include some articles on problems that exist in approaches of the attitudes of some governments (provincial, state and federal) and their policies regarding the problem of addiction.