With the whole life devoted to study emotions in animal models, Jaak Panksepp is in a very special position at animal behavior, psychiatry, and neuroscience. This book is about how he weave a big picture of everything he knows about emotions (affects) from his and other studies, organise them to a map with sign posts and useful comments that help us to appreciate the MindBrain problem. Panksepp demonstrated that, from studies and manipulation of brain chemistry in animals, animal brain is a mirror of the human counterpart and serve as an excellent model to explain our self-awareness, feelings and mental illnesses. Panksepp insists that understanding the basic affective systems is essential for model psychiatry, and that can only be done via acknowledging the more ancient brain instinctual emotional action system we share with other animals.
Not only that, Panksepp is battling against the popular paradigm of psychology, especially recently popular concepts on psycho-analyses, and psychology’s misinformation (or denial to understand) on brain activity and mechanism of actions on different hormones.
His book shows us that how to study the so-called “impossible”, how animals feel and what they think, a topic constantly overlooked in psychology and neuroscience. These invaluable knowledge is very useful for understanding human consciousness; and help us to have a more holistic view on brain development, what we have gain from having a more complex neo-cortex.
I think my summary is actually doing a dis-service of this amazing book; oversimplification that will undermine its significance and beautiful writing. Anyway, I will give it a go.
From his animal work, Panksepp defines seven foundational affect circuits: Seeking, Rage, Fear, Lust, Care, Grief, and Play. Seeking is the most basic system which participate in the other six systems to manifest other emotions.
The periaqueductal gray (PAG) plays the key role to initial all of these affects and the signals are transported both neo-cortical and sub-cortical regions of the brain for hormonal and locomotive responses.
Rather than existing as a passive being waiting for environmental signals, organisms are actively seeking and searching the world for information. The SEEKING action is a reward-driven system controlled by the medial forebrain bundle (MFB-LH) when the animal is exploring the environment hoping to store homeostasis, ie. finding food. Seeking system mediates the secretion of Dopamine and restore bodily comfort and homeostasis. Panksepp pointed out that Dopamine is not really about pleasure indulgence, far from what popular science tell us, Dopamine secretion peaks at the anticipation of rewards during the pursue of reward. Both human and animals like the feeling of having the agency who can make things happen in the world.
“We are always on the lookout for something that we might need or want, or something that might simply interest us and satisfy our curiosity. Our SEEKING systems keep us in a general state of engagement with the world.”
Studying seeking behaviors also give us hints on rituals, habits and addition. In general, when the seeking system is over-stimulated in extreme hunger, animal would adopt unconscious rituals, called adjunctive behavior, which are associate with reward anticipation and pattern recognition toward extraneous stimuli.
To my surprise, RAGE, which give me an impression of a lost of emotional control, actually involves the most of the neo-cortex, which generates cause-and-effect reasoning.
It is because rage/anger in human is usually directed to a responsible party for blame and require a lot of rationalization and a sense of injustice.
Interesting, more exercises on the neo-cortex can suppress excessive emotional arousal; talking therapy for a person can help relieve excessive anger.
In animal, Panksepp pointed out that rage has serve a crucial role in defense but is different from the violence in hunting, where animals exhibit more a seeking reward or play signal.
Another very interesting practice I learn from the book is about fear conditioning, how to use fear to make animal “learn”.
“Evolution created the capacity from fearfulness in the brain, but it did not (and could not) inform us of all the things we might need to fear and avoid. Practically all that has to be learned.”
FEAR system is studied extensively on learning and memory. It is the most flexible system and effective our brain has adopt, meaning that we can learn to be afraid of many many new things that we never encounter in life and remember them as threats.
The problem of animal study, Panksepp pointed out, is that the scientists are reluctant to acknowledge that their animal are experiencing something awful (fear inducing pain shock), but tuned down the whole thing to “punishment”. The anxiety and the fear of the anticipation of painful shock was not investigate thoroughly as the focus was put on whether the mouse learn to pair their pain with the signal or probe.
The interpretation of fear-reduction is a delicate issue, as drug testing on fear-reduction can be misled if we mistaken amnesia with easing anxiety. Panksepp also raised a valid point that studying learning based on fear in animal seems go against our human experience of learning, which is supposed to be a playful seeking process; maybe we shall shift our focus to study “learning” based on positive emotional arousal.
Dwelling on the painful past and over-rumination of traumatic events sensitize the fear system, leading to PTSD. Interestingly, here it is the neo-cortex that doing the compulsive over-stimulation of the lower brain circuitry. Thus, CBT that reformulate the neo-cortex thinking pattern in this case can help with the chronic anxiety. This is another great example of how intervened both brain regions are and how they both shape and affect each other; yet fear is a more ancient event as the basic system at the lower brain (“the low road”) is faster in fear-conditioning than the counterpart “high-road” circuitry that go through the thalamus and neo-cortex.
Lust system involves not only libido but how we defined our sexuality and sexual-identity. Here, the highlight is probably how hormone and social environment shape the recognition of our gender-role and identity. We ought to acknowledge that our brain is very prone to be shaped differently under the concentration of different sex hormones, mainly testosterone and estrogen. These hormones would lead to different brain development. But of course, the hormonal influence is partly driven by our neo-cortex, that constantly attune to external social signals. Finally, brain development is decoupled from bodily development in fetus; which point out that the perfectly natural existence of transgenders.
This seemingly controversial area in nowadays, actually is well-studied; it is the deliberating twisting and cherry-picking on partial scientific facts that fuel the controversy and the scientific findings are lost in the sound and furry.
“about oxytoxin as “the love hormone”- which typically has a few ounces of truth as well as, all too often, pounds of exaggeration. The concept of “confidence” may help explain more of the effects of oxytocin than the concept of “love”.”
Panksepp has put oxytoxin and testosterone as the core mediators in the Care system, that control how animals behave socially. Testosterone makes both male and female more assertive and self-confident; which help them to earn a higher position in a social hierarchy and secure more resources. Working in a synergistic manner, oxytocin promotes trust; experiments show that oxytocin-treated chicks explored more widely around new environment and facilitates retrieval of positive social memories and feelings of trust, while decreasing social anxiety. When a confident animal can afford to trust more and establish good social network, it climbs to a dominant alpha position. Oxytoxin also promotes female confidence in the face of the difficult task of raising children. When the care system is activated, it also promotes deep bonding between mother and the infant.
Grief is aroused during a severed social bond to a loved one. Children that experience abandonments and abuses from neglecting parents develop panic attacks and deep anxiety as adults. They themselves perform poorly as parents due to the deep sense of insecurity.
“The alleviation of the acute pain of grief - relief from the misery of social isolation-may tell us much about love.”
GRIEF system is situated at the medial brain regions, suggesting an ancient role in social interaction. The GRIEF system gradually diminish during maturation and shift to socio-sexual gratification in adults. GRIEF system is modulated by internal secreted opioid and many opioid receptors. Our human brains are extremely additive to the positive feelings from opioid activating social bonding. It hints on our opiate addition, especially on lonely people with little social supports. Panksepp lament on the facts that it is now easier to self-mediate than seeking positive social interactions, and that summarize the tragedy of being a drug addict.
Panksepp also think that understanding the GRIEF system may help advancing the treatment of depression: if we restore the deficits of pleasure chemicals in the brain (not by prescribing opioid analogs) by promoting positive interpersonal attachments.
PLAY sends out joy and fun that we all miss when we grow up. The PLAY system, which promote rough-play, is highly inhibited upon maturation. Adult transforms rough physical play-fight to verbal humor. And play teach us a lot of useful social dynamics, that how we compete with each other while continue the game in a pleasurable way. The play between rats always exhibit as a seventy-thirty win-lose split, when one rat tends to become the “winner”, the playful activity become distressful and the play ends.
Play is also very important learning opportunity for hunting.
Finally, the integration of all these affect system and the neo-cortex reasoning of these continuous emotion and sensation give us a sense of self - an agent with memories and future perspective.
Panksepp has raise his hypothesis that our sense-of-self stemmed from the lower brain region, likely the PAG, where all emotional system converge and deeply connect to our neo-cortex.
This book is just so informative and refreshing that have me rethink a lot of concepts I learnt from self-help books, TED-talks and popular psychology articles.
The books somehow touch on some very hot topics, even being written 10 years ago, on the collapse of social bonds in big metropolitan city, opioid addiction problem, gender issues, and children education. The books offer suggestions and solutions on these difficult and persistence problems of our society; these are the curses at the same time gifts from our MindBrain, a complex affect generating machines that respond to the world and establish us as a autonomic person.
The chapter about the GRIEF system is a very helpful; it is relieving to understand that our brain is just addicted to positive social action. As a slightly aloof person, I am questioned frequently about me being put off by “being social” with a lot of moral and negative opinion.
It is also helpful to know that some of our emotional problem can be alleviate by using our neo-cortex wisely, I guess that CBT is all about; but it is also an important reminder that sorting out the chemistry of the lower brain, where psychiatry aspire to, would be a more effective solution for some mental illness.
One of the most endearing part is knowing that Jaak Panksepp wrote the book during his health struggle with cancers, that he saw the urge to set the record straight for animal affect, his sense of mission to encourage more people to work on this important issue, and his vision on a more comprehensive picture of neuroscience, where all sentient being have a section and contribute to answer the MindBrain problem, as a collective.