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The brain's systems for behavioral regulation work together to meet challenges and promote learning.
How behavior regulation works basically: SEEKING is initiated, homeostatic drives exist, results in 1) satisfaction of biologic needs 2) learning. OR a basic emotion is triggered with a corresponding action plan, e.g., RAGE, FEAR, etc. Some definitions. Clarify what is meant by "emotion" and also distinguish feelings, affect, drives, instincts, etc. How many emotions are there? Why do we have emotional feelings? One example might be thirst, where we are aware that the problem we have is to find water. Another might be agonizing about some social problem. "The Emotional Menagerie"? Memories and emotions-about
[This material from Damasio's introduction summarizes an emerging view that has important implications for how we should look at pain.] [I.e., the characterizations in the preface.]
Damasio, Antonio R., "Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain", Penguin Books, 1994, i-xx
It is finally possible to credibly infer the natural order of the “inner causes” of behavior, including the emotional processes that activate many of the coherent nsychobehavioral tendencies animals and humans ex- hibit spontaneously without much prior learning. These natural brain processes help create the deeply felt....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 11
...various external stimuli have the capacity to arouse specific emotional tendencies, but these emotional potentials exist within the neural circuits of the brain independently of external influences.
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 50
In an experimental procedure known as kindling, animals are induced to exhibit epileptic states by the periodic application of localized electrical stimulation to specific areas of the brain. The tern kindling comes from the gradual induction of this permanent brain sensitivity. The amygdala, an emotionmediating brain a....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 94
kindling induces a permanent change in the functional organization of the brain, without any changes that are clearly evident at the structural level. [cfos seems to be involved.]
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 95
Each major emotion has intrinsic response patterning [behavioral] mechanisms, and one of the main functions of higher brain evolution has been to provide ever greater flexible control over such mechanisms.
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 37
[Brain systems are "open" or "closed" to environmental influences. Closed systems would include reflexes, while emotinal systems are much more open.] ...even though many innate operating systems can arouse instinctual urges, all are subject to environmental modulation. Although the emotional systems are comparatively....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 63
Clearly, the range of our affective feelings is enormous. Most people have little difficulty recognizing and discussing them for what they are—highly influential processes in our personal lives that affect not only the quality of our other mental states but also our sense of bodily well-being. Although we take them for....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 42
The fact that [by carrying out "kindling" protocols] one can obtain these types of chronic personality changes in animals suggests that emotional systems undergo chronic changes in activity as a result of certain types of experiences. Indeed, a variant of this procedure, called long-term potentiation (LTP), has become a....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 95
Because of the ascending interactions with higher brain areas, there is no emotion without a thought, and many thoughts can evoke emotions. Because of the lower interactions, there is no emotion without a physiological or behavioral consequence, and many of the' resulting body changes can also regulate the tone of emot....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 27
My assumption is that neural interactions elaborate a variety of distinct periconscious affective states that have little intrinsic cognitive resolution except various feelings of “goodness" and “badness.” I use the term periconscious to suggest that higher forms of consciousness had to emerge evolutionarily from specif....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 32
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