Jaak Panksepp’s pioneering studies of human and animal emotions demonstrated that play behaviors are part of the subcortical wiring of the brain, indicating a very early evolutionary origin and fundamentally changing views on the science of play behavior. He coined the term “affective neuroscience” in the early 1990s, and his 1998 text on that topic became a core text in a new field of psychology. His book detailed primary processes of brain and mind that enable and drive emotion. Over his career, he published more than three hundred articles in scientific books and journals. His studies explored the primal functions of emotion and the importance of play to successful learning and optimal brain development. Some of his most intriguing studies discuss his observations of rats “laughing” during play bouts, the identification of play deprivation as a driving force like hunger or thirst, and the ways play helps build social bonds. He also explored the possibility that play could help manage ADHD symptoms. His work has been extended by Sergio Pellis, Jeffrey Burgdorf, Steve Siviy, and others.
Most Influential Work:
- Affective Neuroscience (Oxford University Press, 2004), originally published in 1998, is now a core psychology text.
View all books and articles on our site by Jaak Panksepp:
- Playful handling as social enrichment for individually- and group-housed laboratory rats
- Individual differences in Affective Neuroscience Personality Scale (ANPS) primary emotional traits and depressive tendencies
- The emergence of primary anoetic consciousness in episodic memory
- Tickling induces reward in adolescent rats
- Octodon degus. A useful animal model for social-affective neuroscience research: Basic description of separation distress, social attachments and play
- Ultrasonic Vocalizations of Rats (Rattus norvegicus) During Mating, Play, and Aggression: Behavioral Concomitants, Relationship to Reward, and Self-Administration of Playback
- Analysis of the disruption of maternal social bonds in Octodon degus: Separation distress in restricted reunion tests
- The neurobiology of RAGE and anger & psychiatric implications with a focus on depression
- Stress-induced, glucocorticoid-dependent strengthening of glutamatergic synaptic transmission in midbrain dopamine neurons
- Differential ultrasonic indices of separation distress in the presence and absence of maternal cues in infant rats bred for high and low positive social affect
