Affective Consciousness

Panksepp, Jaak

doi:10.1002/9780470751466.ch9

Cited by 29 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Parenthetically, such emotional attunements may promote language development [50] and psychotherapeutic practices [51], especially when deployed with affectively positive memory-reconsolidation procedures [48,52]. Empathic resonances may run deeply into the evolved neural networks that mediate affective consciousness and memory formation [53], and which mediate ‘laws of affect’ that control learning and socialization [36,37,48]. Indeed, the nested hierarchical organization of brain functions (Box 1) has implications for many facets of empathy that remain to be explored (Box 3): perhaps the higher-order empathic functions cannot be understood without understanding the foundational levels.…”

Section: Beyond Terminological and Conceptual Conundrumsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a cross-species understanding of empathy

Panksepp¹,

Panksepp²

2013

Trends in Neurosciences

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Although signs of empathy have now been well documented in non-human primates, only during the past few years have systematic observations suggested that a primal form of empathy exists in rodents. Thus, the study of empathy in animals has started in earnest. Here we review recent studies indicating that rodents are able to share states of fear, and highlight how affective neuroscience approaches to the study of primary-process emotional systems can help to delineate how primal empathy is constituted in mammalian brains. Cross-species evolutionary approaches to understanding the neural circuitry of emotional ‘contagion’ or ‘resonance’ between nearby animals, together with the underlying neurochemistries, may help to clarify the origins of human empathy.

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Section: Beyond Terminological and Conceptual Conundrumsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a cross-species understanding of empathy

Panksepp¹,

Panksepp²

2013

Trends in Neurosciences

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242

179

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“…Our evolutionary theoretical approach of understanding consciousness focuses on how lower levels of primary-process affective experience or “anoetic” consciousness emerge gradually by learning and memory into autonoetic consciousness through a progressive developmental maturation of the brain and mind (Panksepp, 1998a, 2005, 2007, 2008; Tulving, 2004, 2005; Vandekerckhove, 2009; Vandekerckhove and Panksepp, 2009, 2011). Anoetic consciousness reflects a primal state of autonomic-phenomenal awakeness, with direct experiences of oneself and the world – namely, an unknowing or “anoetic” (without explicit knowledge) consciousness consisting of perceptual, motoric-procedural and various primal emotional, homeostatic, and sensory affective states (Panksepp, 1998a; Merker, 2007).…”

Section: From Unknowing To Knowing Levels Of Consciousnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This underlying form of primary-process form of anoetic affective consciousness which is instantiated in diverse forms of qualia, including primal affective feelings, has often been neglected in consciousness studies (Panksepp, 1998a, 2007; Merker, 2007; Vandekerckhove, 2009; Solms and Panksepp, 2012). Such primal foundational processes have often been deemed to be deeply unconscious or “unexperienced,” but this is not the case for the unconditional positive and negative feelings that arise from this level of neural processing (Panksepp, 1998a, 2005, 2007, 2008). Anoetic consciousness is constituted from “here and now” pre-reflective phenomenal experiences, not requiring higher-order forms of self-reflective consciousness subsumed by the concept of “awareness” (Solms and Panksepp, 2012).…”

Section: From Unknowing To Knowing Levels Of Consciousnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Only if the experience gets intense enough and therefore salient, one is able to describe, and/or reflect on it (Vandekerckhove and Panksepp, 2011). The underlying autonomic and organic state processes, arising from viscerally enriched subcortical circuits extend from the mesencephalic central gray regions, through medial diencephalic regions, toward cingulate and orbitomedial frontal cortices (Panksepp, 2007) are continuously contributing to the flow and fluctuations of anoetic consciousness that provides a critical foundation and background for higher cognitive activities.…”

Section: Transitions From “Unknowing” To “Knowing” Forms Of Consciousmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The individual may choose to do various things as underlying causes of the anoetic affective flow and associated physiological changes fluctuate (e.g., increased blood pressure, skin conductance, and heart rate). These affectively rich emotional “action tendencies” that organisms experience, facilitate not only urges to act – for instance facilitation of enthusiasm via increased brain dopamine release, but also serve as a prelude to intended actions within higher levels of consciousness (Panksepp, 2007). Associated affective arousals are endogenously further regulated by other biogenic amine transmitters such as norepinephrine and serotonin, contributing to the intensity of anoetic consciousness, that may gradually emerge into explicit awareness when raw experience is transformed into noetic consciousness that fuels autonoetic awareness.…”

Section: Transitions From “Unknowing” To “Knowing” Forms Of Consciousmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Emergence of Primary Anoetic Consciousness in Episodic Memory

Vandekerckhove

Bulnes

Panksepp

2014

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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Based on an interdisciplinary perspective, we discuss how primary-process, anoetic forms of consciousness emerge into higher forms of awareness such as knowledge-based episodic knowing and self-aware forms of higher-order consciousness like autonoetic awareness. Anoetic consciousness is defined as the rudimentary state of affective, homeostatic, and sensory-perceptual mental experiences. It can be considered as the autonomic flow of primary-process phenomenal experiences that reflects a fundamental form of first-person “self-experience,” a vastly underestimated primary form of phenomenal consciousness. We argue that this anoetic form of evolutionarily refined consciousness constitutes a critical antecedent that is foundational for all forms of knowledge acquisition via learning and memory, giving rise to a knowledge-based, or noetic, consciousness as well as higher forms of “awareness” or “knowing consciousness” that permits “time-travel” in the brain-mind. We summarize the conceptual advantages of such a multi-tiered neuroevolutionary approach to psychological issues, namely from genetically controlled primary (affective) and secondary (learning and memory), to higher tertiary (developmentally emergent) brain-mind processes, along with suggestions about how affective experiences become more cognitive and object-oriented, allowing the developmental creation of more subtle higher mental processes such as episodic memory which allows the possibility of autonoetic consciousness, namely looking forward and backward at one’s life and its possibilities within the “mind’s eye.”

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Toward a cross‐species neuroscientific understanding of the affective mind: do animals have emotional feelings?

Panksepp

2011

American J Primatol

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Do we need to consider mental processes in our analysis of brain functions in other animals? Obviously we do, if such BrainMind functions exist in the animals we wish to understand. If so, how do we proceed, while still retaining materialistic-mechanistic perspectives? This essay outlines the historical forces that led to emotional feelings in animals being marginalized in behavioristic scientific discussions of why animals behave the way they do, and why mental constructs are generally disregarded in modern neuroscientific analyses. The roots of this problem go back to Cartesian dualism and the attempt of 19th century physician-scientists to ground a new type of medical curriculum on a completely materialistic approach to body functions. Thereby all vitalistic principles were discarded from the lexicon of science, and subjective experience in animals was put in that category and discarded as an invalid approach to animal behavior. This led to forms of rigid operationalism during the era of behaviorism and subsequently ruthless reductionism in brain research, leaving little room for mentalistic concepts such as emotional feelings in animal research. However, modern studies of the brain clearly indicate that artificially induced arousals of emotional networks, as with localized electrical and chemical brain stimulation, can serve as "rewards" and "punishments" in various learning tasks. This strongly indicates that animal brains elaborate various experienced states, with those having affective contents being easiest to study rigorously. However, in approaching emotional feelings empirically we must pay special attention to the difficulties and vagaries of human language and evolutionary levels of control in the brain. We need distinct nomenclatures from primary (unconditioned phenomenal experiences) to tertiary (reflective) levels of mind. The scientific pursuit of affective brain processes in other mammals can now reveal general BrainMind principles that also apply to human feelings, as with neurochemical predictions from preclinical animal models to self-reports of corresponding human experiences. In short, brain research has now repeatedly verified the existence of affective experience-various reward and punishment functions-during artificial arousal of emotional networks in our fellow animals. The implications for new conceptual schema for understanding human/primate affective feelings and how such knowledge can impact scientific advances in biological psychiatry are also addressed.

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Affective Consciousness

Cited by 29 publications

References 18 publications

Toward a cross-species understanding of empathy

Toward a cross-species understanding of empathy

The Emergence of Primary Anoetic Consciousness in Episodic Memory

Toward a cross‐species neuroscientific understanding of the affective mind: do animals have emotional feelings?

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