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The brain contains a basic emotional system that triggers avoidance behaviors. This is the fear system.
Panksepp's FEAR system.
BZ [benzodiazepine] receptors are concentrated along the trajectory of the FEAR circuit, from the central amygdala, downward via the ventral amygdalofugal pathway, through the anterior and medial hypothalamus, and down across the substantia nigra to the PAG and the nucleus reticularis pontis caudalis (the RPC), where fe....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 217
[FEAR circuits interdigitate extensively with RAGE circuits.]
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 208
the capacity to experience fear, along with fear-typical patterns of autonomic and behavioral arousal, emerges primarily from a FEAR circuit that courses between the central amygdala and the periaqueductal gray of the midbrain. Fear behaviors can be evoked by artificially activating this circuit, and conditioned fears c....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 206
A FEAR circuit was probably designed during evolution to help janimals reduce pain and the possibility of destruction. When stimulated intensely, this circuit leads animals to run away as if they are extremely scared. With very weak stimulation, animals exhibit just the opposite motor tendency—a freezing response, comm....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 54
The FEAR system contains certain intrinsic sensitivities, in that it responds unconditionally to pain and the smell of predators and other intrinsically scary stimuli, but it can also establish new input components that function through learning to inform the organism about cues that predict threats. Some environmental....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 215
When this system is activated by electrical stimulation of the brain (ESB), animals exhibit a variety of fearlike behaviors, ranging from an initial freezing response at low current levels to an increasingly precipitous flight response at higher current intensities. These, of course, reflect the types of fear responses....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 213
the original idea that captivated psychology—that fear is simply a conditioned response to the cues that predict pain—is no longer tenable.
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 208
Perhaps the clearest evidence for the dissociation [of pain from fear systems] is, that fearlike behaviors in animals and fear states in humans are not readily produced by electrical stimulation of the classic spinothalamic pain systems. It is only at midbrain levels, where the classic pain systems diverge into reticu....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 215
the potential for fear is a genetically ingrained function of the nervous system. This should come as no surprise. An organism's ability to perceive and anticipate dangers was of such obvious importance during evolution that it was not simply left to the vagaries of individual learning. Even though learning is essential....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 206
it is also clear that the FEAR system does control pain sensitivity. It is commonly observed that animals and humans do not focus on their bodily injuries when they are scared, and fear-induced analgesia emerges, at least in part, from arousal of pain-inhibition pathways such as serotonin and endogenous opioids, near t....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 215
symptomatic distinctions can also be made between fearful anxiety and separation anxiety. The former is characterized by generalized apprehensive tension, with a tendency toward various autonomic symptoms such as tachycardia, sweating, gastrointestinal symptoms, and increased muscle tension. The latter, especially in in....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 212
laboratory rats exhibit fear responses (increased freezing and inhibition of other motivated behaviors) to the smell of cats and other predators (see Figure 1.1), even though they have never encountered such creatures in their lives, having grown up in the safety of a controlled laboratory setting
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 207
there are distinct sites in the brain where electrical stimulation will provoke a full fear response in all mammalian species, and these are locations where the executive system for FEAR is concentrated. These are in the lateral and central zones of the amygdala, the anterior and medial hypothalamus, and, most clearly (....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 207
Brain-stimulation studies have long suggested that a coherently operating FEAR system exists in the brain. As mentioned previously, it extends from the temporal lobe (from central and lateral areas of the amygdala) through the anterior and medial hypothalamus to the lower brain stem (through the periventricular gray sub....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 213
[Behavioral research into fear and anxiety has shown that there are multiple types of learned fears. Neuroscience shows that there are many interrelated neural systems that account for this, although these have not all been teased out.]
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 208-12
mild fear is characterized largely by behavioral inhibition components, while intense fear is commonly characterized by active flight….
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 208
Although pain is an especially effective stimulus for creating fear and generating learned fears, it does not constitute fear itself.
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 208
If given the opportunity, animals will avoid environments where they have received such stimulation [ESB of the FEAR system] in the past, and if no avenue of escape is provided, they will freeze as if in the presence of a predator.
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 213-4
now that we recognize that some fears represent the innate potentials of the brain, we can begin to ask how innate fears might be elaborated. Presumably, certain patterns of sensory stimulation have direct access to FEAR circuitry. This is affirmed to some extent by the patterns of fear development in human children. Ch....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 221
the power of the cat-smell stimulus to provoke fear is probably restricted to species that are normally preyed upon by cats. Cat smell is a species-typical rather than a species-general fear stimulus, while pain is an example of the latter. This demonstrates that there will be enormous species variability in the natural....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 19
End of included memoes/notes