Kandel's Nature-Nurture Debate Summary

The nature-nurture debate has been an ongoing dispute since the Elizabethan period. In terms of psychiatry, Kandel literates the rapprochement between mental processes and the operations of the brain. He takes a very strong stance on the dominance of biological psychiatry because he believes that people process and express information from a single gene expression. I agree with Kandel’s model of biological psychiatry because he produces an intellectual framework that discusses the relationship between modern biology and gene expression. Additionally, he explains how social factors can alter gene expression in specific nerve cells of specific regions of the brain. Conversely, Kandel depicts exceptions to his biological model by clarifying that some mental processes form alternatively from environmental/social factors.

In this article, Kandel creates an intellectual framework summarizing five main principles that explain the relationship between modern biology and psychiatric thinking. Kandel introduces his first principle articulating, “All mental processes, even the most complex psychological processes, derive from operations of the brain. He states “genes and their protein products are important determinants of the pattern of interconnections between neurons in the brain and the details of their functioning” (Handel, 460). In
He explains that in the regulatory region, social/environmental factors can biologically incorporate the altered expressions which produces our mental processes and disorders. Additionally, Kandel’s ideas create the framework of cultural evolution in which he believes that gene expressions change through learning, developing, and experiencing our social surroundings. Moreover, Kendal creates exceptions to his biological model by illustrating that our mental processes and disorders are partially shaped by our environmental