Starting from a biological perspective, it is possible to analyze the human brain in terms of its very low-level characteristics. We know that the brain is comprised of billions of neurons that communicate messages by altering the balance of certain chemicals at connections between the neurons called synapses. These neurons combine in an indescribably complicated web to maintain and communicate signals around the brain and the broader nervous system. Zooming out, these neurons are organized into numerous different systems within the brain itself. We consider these organizations in terms of two elements: hemispheres and lobes. The brain has two hemispheres (left and right), and four primary lobes: the temporal lobe, parietal lobe, occipital lobe and frontal lobe.

The brain is a remarkably complicated organ, but biologically that organization describes its overall structure. In order to analyze the brain further, it is important to consider it in terms of its functions. For example, different lobes take care of different conscious and subconscious processes. There are specific areas of the brain devoted to language, motor skills, reasoning, memory, and numerous other categories.

However, there exists a strong disconnect between our biological knowledge of the brain and our psychological knowledge of the brain. We know its structure and some general categories of what portions of the structure correspond to what behaviors, but we lack a true understanding of how the brain actually accomplishes the numerous tasks it performs.

Thus, from the biological level, there exists a gap up to the true schools of thought of psychology. While the major schools of thought do give some attention to biology, they largely conduct their research and formulate their theories based on an abstracted form of the brain as a biological entity. As we will see, the different schools of