The Impact Of Neurobiology On A Person s Behaviors And...

Understanding Neurobiology As a social worker, it is important to be aware of neurobiology of the brain. A persons thoughts and actions can best be explained by neurobiology. Social workers work daily with people who seek therapy to address thoughts and actions that occur in their everyday life. In order to provide best practice, it is important to have understanding of how neurobiology plays a role in the development of a person’s behaviors and thought processes. Four aspects of brain development that are particularly important for a social worker to be aware of are affect regulation, implicit memory, attachment style, and co-construction of the social brain. A vignette about a 22 year old mother named Isabel and her 4 year old son named†¦show more content†¦It is through the earliest interaction between an infant and the caregiver that an individual’s affect regulation begins to be generated. The mutual affect regulation displayed by the caregiver and the inf ant allows the infant to learn and internalize how to regulate intense emotions. An infant’s brain structure and function becomes implicitly embedded with the modes of early affect regulation through the neuronal structures that allows the individual to have appropriate modes of relating throughout life (Applegate Shapiro, 2005). The goal of affect regulation is to increase the positive affects and decrease the negative affects. A mechanism in the brain that has contributed to the creation of Javier’s behaviors would be the limbic system. The limbic system is considered to be the center of emotion (Applegate Shapiro, 2005). The three key regions of this system are the orbitofrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate, and the amygdala. The amygdala is a part of the brain that is considered to be important to affect regulation. The amygdala is utilized to identify, understand, and interpret emotions. It plays a role in the automatic, rapid, and early detection of affect (LeDoux, 2000). It is considered to be important in regulating emotion and guiding emotion-related behaviors. Javier appears to have struggled with developing appropriate affect regulation due to the