SEEKING

Why can’t we realize if we don’t make immediate changes, climate change is on course to destroy our planet? The answer is straight forward. We are mammals. Our higher executive cortex is slave to our lower subcortical emotional systems, just as all the other mammals.

SEEKING System

The SEEKING system, one of the seven primary-affect systems, is driven by brain dopamine. But it is much more than just the creation of that one energizing neurotransmitter. It is a complex knowledge-and-belief-generating system. Our neocortex does not provide its own motivation; our neocortex is activated by our subcortical lizard brain.

The SEEKING system is one of the seven primal affect systems documented in the rat lab experiments of Jaak Panksepp. Primal meaning that it exists as an objectless part of our neural brain system from the day we are born. SEEKING, like the other six primal emotion systems, becomes connected to the outside world through learning.

Our SEEKING system can all too easily urge us to indulge in a wide range of activities that our executive neocortex might want to consider before taking part. It does so by operating in the background, especially so when we are not in any particular need of resources or troubled by problems that require urgent need.

SEEKING System Slaves

We drink too much. We eat too much.  We check our emails and text messages far too often. We get hooked on drugs. We gamble away hard-earned money and sometimes engage in ill-advised sexual affairs. How I so hate to admit and find it hard to believe, I have engaged in all of the above. When I look in the mirror I definitely do not want to see that man. So maybe, fortunately, he’s covered now with lots of blemishes and wrinkles.

Primary affect systems are first encountered in undergraduate and graduate psychology programs, and then usually with the very few studying affective neuroscience. But we need to bring this way down even to the lower primary grades. It takes a long time to understand how our subcortical brain dominates and longer to learn to take charge at our executive neocortical thinking level.

Teaching Affective Neuroscience

It would mean teaching students to be aware of their feelings and motivations. It would involve practicing living in the present moment with Insight Meditation and breathing techniques. And by learning to take charge of our lives at an early age, we could be live more productive lives.

We could reduce senseless violence and save a lot of lives. I think of the man who shot and killed a high school student because the music was too loud in his car. How could a man who works as a computer engineer shoot ten bullets into a car of unarmed high school students? Who is in charge here? Obviously, he knew intellectually that you shoot and kill someone, you go to jail for a long time. Now he is imprisoned for life with no chance of parole.

The subcortical brain does not think. It motivates in terms of immediate emotional needs. It motivated the neocortex to take quick, effective, satisfying action. And it had just that instant effect. It never promised him a rose garden. And that is just what we have to teach kids. Especially today in terms of addiction.

Anatomy of the SEEKING System

Dopamine flows from the ventral tegmental area (VTA) (dopamine factory) to the medial forebrain bundle and lateral hypothalamus (MFB-LH), to the nucleus accumbens, and to the medial prefrontal cortex.  The SEEKING system is fueled by dopamine.