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When are we responsible for our own actions, and when are we in the grip of biological forces beyond our control? This intriguing question is the scientific province of behavioral biology, a field that explores interactions among the brain, mind, body, and environment that have a surprising influence on how we behave—from the people we fall in love with, to the intensity of our spiritual lives, to the degree of our aggressive impulses. In short, it is the study of how our brains make us the individuals that we are. Biology and Human Behavior: The Neurological Origins of Individuality, 2nd Edition, is an interdisciplinary approach to this fascinating subject. In 24 lectures, you will investigate how the human brain is sculpted by evolution, constrained or freed by genes, shaped by early experience, modulated by hormones, and otherwise influenced to produce a wide range of behaviors, some of them abnormal.

Lectures

1.	Biology and Behavior—An Introduction
2.	The Basic Cells of the Nervous System
3.	How Two Neurons Communicate
4.	Learning and Synaptic Plasticity
5.	The Dynamics of Interacting Neurons
6.	The Limbic System
7.	The Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)
8.	The Regulation of Hormones by the Brain
9.	The Regulation of the Brain by Hormones
10.	The Evolution of Behavior
11.	The Evolution of Behavior—Some Examples
12.	Cooperation, Competition, and Neuroeconomics
13.	What Do Genes Do? Microevolution of Genes
14.	What Do Genes Do? Macroevolution of Genes
15.	Behavior Genetics
16.	Behavior Genetics and Prenatal Environment
17.	An Introduction to Ethology
18.	Neuroethology
19.	The Neurobiology of Aggression I
20.	The Neurobiology of Aggression II
21.	Hormones and Aggression
22.	Early Experience and Aggression
23.	Evolution, Aggression, and Cooperation
24.	A Summary