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The neural correlates of human emotions are easy to harvest. In contrast, the neural constitution of emotional feelings in humans has resisted systematic scientific analysis. This review summarizes how preclinical affective neuroscience initiatives are making progress in decoding the neural nature of such feelings in animal brains. This has been achieved by studying the rewarding […]
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Play fighting is a commonly reported form of play in the young of many mammals. Most of the studies on the neurobehavioral mechanisms regulating this behavior have focused on the laboratory rat. The rationale for doing so has been primarily on practical grounds. This paper seeks to answer the question, ‘How good is the rat […]
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First paragraph of this paper: Neuropsychoanalysis seeks to understand the human mind, especially as it relates to first-person experience. It recognizes the essential role of neuroscience in such quests. However, unlike most branches of neuroscience, it positions mind and brain on an equal footing. It recognizes that the mammalian brain is not only an information […]
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During the past half century of research with preclinical animal models, affective neuroscience has helped identify and illuminate the functional neuroanatomies and neurochemistries of seven primary process, i.e., genetically provided emotional systems of mammalian brains. All are subcortically localized, allowing animal models to guide the needed behavioral and neuroscientific analyses at levels of detail that […]
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Mammalian brains contain at least 7 primal emotional systems–Seeking, Rage, Fear, Lust, Care, Panic and Play (capitalization reflects a proposed primary-process terminology, to minimize semantic confusions and mereological fallacies). These systems help organisms feel affectively balanced (e.g. euthymic) and unbalanced (e.g. depressive, irritable, manic), providing novel insights for understanding human psychopathologies. Three systems are especially […]
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The concept of peace, with its corollary of behaviours, strategies and social implications, is commonly believed as a uniquely human feature. Through a comparative approach, we show how social play in animals may have paved the way for the emergence of peace. By playing fairly, human and nonhuman animals learn to manage their social dynamics […]
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Introduction: Rough-and-tumble play presents opportunities for young mammals to test social skills in an affiliative context. Because serotonin (5HT) depletion can induce nonaffiliative or openly hostile behavior in adult rats’ and primates,’ we conducted an experiment to examine if serotonin depletion would also increase the agonistic nature of play behavior in juvenile rats. Results: Taken […]
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Emotional facial expressions provide important insights into various valenced feelings of humans. Recent cross-species neuroscientific advances offer insights into molecular foundations of mammalian affects and hence, by inference, the related emotional/affective facial expressions in humans. This is premised on deep homologies based on affective neuroscience studies of valenced primary emotional systems across species. Thus, emerging […]
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Rough and tumble (R&T) play is an intrinsic behavior in most mammals. However, unlike sex and aggression, play has not been well characterized in terms of neuronal circuitry. We employed in situ hybridization to explore the differences of c-fos mRNA activation in juvenile rats that had been allowed R&T play for a total of 30 […]
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Appetitive motivation and incentive states are essential functions sustained by a common emotional brain process, the SEEKING disposition, which drives explorative and approach behaviors, sustains goal-directed activity, promotes anticipatory cognitions, and evokes feelings of positive excitement which control reward-learning. All such functions are orchestrated by the same ” archetypical ” neural processes, activated in ancient […]
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Compared to the study of negative emotions such as fear, the neurobiology of positive emotional processes and the associated positive affect (PA) states has only recently received scientific attention. Biological theories conceptualize PA as being related to (i) signals indicating that bodies are returning to equilibrium among those studying homeostasis, (ii) utility estimation among those […]
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The medial forebrain bundle (MFB), a key structure of reward-seeking circuitry, remains inadequately characterized in humans despite its vast importance for emotional processing and development of addictions and depression. Using Diffusion Tensor Imaging Fiber Tracking (DTI FT) the authors describe potential converging ascending and descending MFB and anterior thalamic radiation (ATR) that may mediate major […]
Selected Principles of Pankseppian Affective Neuroscience
In the early nineties of the twentieth century Jaak Panksepp coined the term “Affective Neuroscience†(AN) today being accepted as a unique research area in cross-species brain science. By means of (i) electrical stimulation, (ii) pharmacological challenges, and (iii) brain lesions of vertebrate brains (mostly mammalian), Panksepp carved out seven primary emotional systems called SEEKING, […]