Tag Archives: Affective Neuroscience

Play for Life

Jaak Panksepp called the seventh affect system the Play System. Seven Primary Affect Systems SEEKING or expectancy RAGE FEAR LUST CARING PANIC/GRIEF PLAY You might not think of PLAY in terms of affective neuroscience, but according to Jaak Panksepp’s years of … Continue reading

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Emotions

Emotions Jaak Panksepp discovered that the lower brain seems to be organized in such a way that one primal affective state prevails at any one time. He calls this monomania and it causes the upper thinking neocortex to follow the … Continue reading

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Primary Emotions

Primary Emotions The brain is built from the bottom up. At the bottom is the reptilian brain and surrounding the top of the brain is the neocortex or as Jack Panksepp would put it, our “thinking cap.”  In between is … Continue reading

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Opioids versus Opiates

Opioids versus Opiates An opiate is a drug naturally derived from the flowering opium poppy plant. Opioid is the broader term that includes opiates. When I say opioid, I refer to natural brain opioids. When I say opiate, I mean … Continue reading

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CARING with Oxytocin

Jaak Panksepp coined the term affective neuroscience or the neuroscience of emotions. Culminating a lifetime of animal lab research, he identified seven primary-process emotions built into the brain by evolution, hardwired into the subcortical networks of all mammalian brains:

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FEAR Factor

Primal-Affect Systems SEEKING or expectancy RAGE FEAR LUST CARING PANIC/GRIEF PLAY

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LUST

LUST LUST is fourth on the list of Jaak Panksepp’s seven primary affect systems. These primary affects all originate in the subcortical brain.  They are like the prime numbers of the emotional system. They can’t be divided by any other … Continue reading

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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 … Continue reading

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Mood Brain-zapping

Deluge of Brain-Zapping Mood Research Direct electrical stimulation of lateral orbitofrontal cortex acutely improves mood in individuals with symptoms of depression. Current Biology Mood variations decoded from multi-site intracranial human brain activity. Nature Biotechnology An amygdala-hippocampus subnetwork that encodes variation in … Continue reading

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Emotional Brain Reigns

Emotional Brain Understanding past trauma does little to help in dealing with PTSD. No matter how much insight and planning, the emotional brain has a reality of its own and it is the emotional brain that reigns.

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