Praise be to Jaak Panksepp

Abstract

On April 18, we were surprised by the news that neuroscientist Dr. Jaak Panksepp had passed away. Dr. Panksepp in his last days was Professor of the Integrative Physiology & Neuroscience at Washington State University and Emeritus Professor of the Department of Psychology at Bowling Green State University.
Talking about the importance of his legacy is both simple and unbelievably difficult. But it is just a superficial contradiction. It is simple because his work had an immense and undeniable impact. It is difficult, because it has brought about so many transformations in so many areas that everything that can be mentioned will never be enough. Also, in his work there is plenty of subtleties with great implications. Little is left out of the impact of his work, not only scientifically, but also as part of the Human Weltanschauung from the philosophical point of view.

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ACTA PSYCHOPATHOLOGICA
ISSN 2469-6676
2017
Vol. 3 No. 3: 31
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DOI: 10.4172/2469-6676.100103
© Under License of Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License | This article is available from: www.psychopathology.imedpub.com
João Paulo Correia Lima and
Avelino Luiz Rodrigues
Department of Clinical Psychology, Instute
of Psychology, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
Corresponding author:
Avelino Luiz Rodrigues
 avelinoluizr@usp.br
Professor, Department of Clinical
Psychology, Instute of Psychology,
University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Tel: +55-11-32852420, +55-11-983439754
Citation: Lima JPC, Rodrigues AL. Praise Be
to Jaak Panksepp. Acta Psychopathol. 2017,
3:3.
A few days ago, on April 18, we were surprised by the news that
neuroscienst Dr. Jaak Panksepp had passed away. Dr. Panksepp
in his last days was Professor of the Integrave Physiology &
Neuroscience at Washington State University and Emeritus
Professor of the Department of Psychology at Bowling Green
State University.
Talking about the importance of his legacy is both simple and
unbelievably dicult. But it is just a supercial contradicon.
It is simple because his work had an immense and undeniable
impact. It is dicult, because it has brought about so many
transformaons in so many areas that everything that can be
menoned will never be enough. Also, in his work there is plenty
of subtlees with great implicaons. Lile is le out of the impact
of his work, not only sciencally, but also as part of the Human
Weltanschauung from the philosophical point of view.
A short, but insighul, biography of Panksepp has been compiled
by Robin Stock, so there are no innovaons to be made in this
topic:
“Jaak Panksepp was born on June 5, 1943 in Tartu, Estonia. He and
his family ed to the United States when the Soviets began to take
over his country. Panksepp earned his B.S. in Psychology in 1965
from the University of Pisburgh in Pennsylvania. In 1967, I earned
his M.S. and in 1969 his Ph.D. both in Physiological Psychology at
the University of Massachuses in Amherst, Massachuses. His
graduate thesis focused on electrical smulaon and lesions of
the brain and the corresponding behavioral eects. His thesis,
"The Neural Basis of Aggression in the Albino Rat," focused on
the behavioral consequences of incenve shis, eects of drug
on self-smulaon and aggression, and behavioral analysis
on posive and aversive electrical smulaon of the brain.
Panksepp completed a postdoc in 1971 at the University of
Sussex in Brighton, England, where he studied the role of medial
hypothalamic lesions, insulin, and protein synthesis inhibion in
feeding behavior. At the Worcester Foundaon in Shrewsbury,
Massachuses, I completed another postdoc in 1972 in sleep
physiology.”
So, Dr. Panksepp lived his life as a good and honest man and it
could sustain an interesng and capvang poetry of daily life,
but what is truly amazing is his work.
The general lines of his work emphasized that Emoons seem
to be the most fundamental of the hard-wired neural circuits
in the visceral-limbic brain that facilitate diverse and adapve
behavioral and physiological responses to major classes of
environmental challenges. Presumably these circuits developed
early in the mammalian brain evoluon, and the underlying
control mechanisms remain similar in humans. This would
suggest that theorecally guided studies of the animal brain can
reveal how primive emoons are organized in the human brain.
Let Panksepp himself explain:
“[…] conversely, granted this cross-species heritage, it is arguable
that human introspecve access to emoonal states may
provide direct informaon concerning operaons of emove
circuits and thus be a primary source of hypotheses for animal
brain research. In this arcle the possibility that emoons are
elaborated by transhypothalamic execuve (command) circuits
that concurrently acvate related behavior paerns is assessed.
Current neurobehavioral evidence indicates that there are at
least four execuve circuits of this type–those which elaborate
central states of expectancy, rage, fear, and panic. The manner in
which learning and psychiatric disorders may arise from acvies
of such circuits is also discussed” [1].
The four (at least) execuve circuits quoted above later became
7, as we can see above. The manner in which learning and
psychiatric disorders may arise from acvies of such circuits is
also very extensively discussed across his work. With this in mind,
one can easily understand that if this assumpon is true, animal
brain research will reveal the basis and the general architecture
of emoons in the human brain.
Received: April 28, 2017; Accepted: May 25, 2017; Published: May 31, 2017
Praise Be to Jaak Panksepp

2017
ACTA PSYCHOPATHOLOGICA
ISSN 2469-6676
Vol. 3 No. 3: 31
2This article is available from: www.psychopathology.imedpub.com
No one can overrate this issue as far as “boom-up” and “top-
down” quesons are concerned. This means that the center
of control of the acon or system acvaon starts in the body
feelings or come from encephalic regions. We can appreciate
this in a special paper called “Integrang boom-up internalist
views of emoonal feelings with top-down externalist views:
Might brain aecve changes constute reward and punishment
eects within animal brains?” [5].
Again, the implicaons are immense. It is enough to see the
tle of one of his last books: ‘’Social Behavior from Rodents
to Humans’’ [6], where one of the chapters is justly called
‘’The Psycho-Neurology of Cross-Species Aecve/Social
Neuroscience: Understanding Animal Aecve States as a Guide
to Development of Novel Psychiatric Treatments”.
In an aempt to situate its impact of Panksepp on a short
comment, a synthesis was necessary, which implies some
simplicaon, but, even at this risk, we can understand the
importance of his scienc work, both from the point of view
of research, as well as the philosophical point of view, and the
resulng interacon between the two.
The human and biological sciences, in their eorts to understand
the human being or even to dene it, always lead to the queson
of emoons. Panksepp with his aecve neuroscience model
could situate the role of the basic emoons in the behavior,
bringing these quesons to the methods of the natural sciences
and allowing it to be studied at the laboratory. This eort
brought other consequences, enabling the consolidaon of
the knowledge of the human being as "a being" of nature. By
a strange aberraon of these methodological dicules quite
oen le aside, the Human being stood apart from nature, as in
a solitary solipsism.
Panksepp "animated" us (give us a “anima” a “natural soul”, his
results and methodological approach allowed the human being
to be animal, in a absolutely good and new way to consider these
quesons); in a profoundly existenal sense, he had returned us
to Nature. The opposite also applies: his work had “humanized”
the “other animals”, and both us “animals” and “human” became
closer and very near, indeed.
Starng from the work of pioneer giants such as Konrad
Lorenz, Nicholas Tinbergen, among others (and therefore the
development of an epistemology based on an evoluonary
understanding), this knowledge made possible the emergence
and development of neuroscience and a scienc analysis of
emoonal behavior, bringing the human being more consistently
close to the Animal Kingdom; it also began to be analyzed in an
extremely procient way under the paradigms of causality and
from an empirical point of view.
With his researches and discoveries on the neural systems
generang of emoons, he has shed immense light on this
eld, which allowed for an approach that aligned the behavior
of several species and their funcon, and brought together
several elds of research and several other areas of knowledge,
such as Psychology, Biology, Anthropology, Psychoanalysis, and
several works like those of John Bowlby. Let us see, for example,
Based on this, Panksepp described seven primary processes.
Each one of them is in charge of a parcular kind of possible
environmental challenges and his repertoire of adapve
behavior. Each one of these seven sets is genecally provided
with emoonal systems of mammalian brains. Also, the author
stressed that all these systems are subcorcally localized, so it is
not possible to invesgate with modern brain imagery.
This seven basic emoons or emoon systems consist of the
seven “neuronal process” [2]:
1. SEEKING/Enthusiasm;
2. RAGE/Anger;
3. FEAR/Anxiety;
4. sexual LUST/Passion;
5. maternal CARE/Nurturance;
6. PANIC separaon/distress, Grief; and
7. PLAY/Social Joy.
How the author himself stressed several mes across his work,
most of these systems gure heavily in social bonding, and social
bonds are very important to mammals. We can add to this that
there is very strong evidence linking the high encephalizaon and
complexity of social life in primates, like us, humans [3].
Based on these seven systems Panksepp presented a
methodology for the study and comprehension of several kinds
of pathologies. In Current Topics in Behavioral Neuroscience [2],
for instance, he and his team describe depression as a “sustained
overacvity of the separaon-distress PANIC system reecng
severed social bonds and the excessive "psychological pain" of
loneliness that, if sustained, can lead to a downward cascade
known as psychological despair, and (ii) The despair phase that
follows the PANIC response, which is characterized by abnormally
low acvity of the SEEKING, the so-called brain reward networks,
leading to a movaonal states that characterize depression. To
understand why depression feels so bad, we must understand
the neural mechanisms that mediate such social feelings.”
From this, always relang the funcon of the systems of primary
emoons, both in the evoluonary sense, as an anatomical and
biomolecular point of view, we have the solid foundaon for a
branching of studies in several areas. This can be viewed in tles
of some of his most recent works, such as "Posive Emoonal
Learning Induces Resilience to Depression: A Role for NMDA
Receptor-mediated Synapc Plascity" [2], where we can see the
remarkable approach of complex behaviors, personal experiences
and changes at a cellular-molecular level. Here we can see
the remarkable advance that his concepons and results have
brought to the understanding of what Tinbergen called "proximal
causes" [4]. Considering emoons as primary tools shared by
all mammals, we have that they play their part in a boom-up
pathway, favoring a class of behaviors that have proven most
suitable in the evoluonary past of this genre. This has major
implicaons in the frame where research and concepons and
theorecal approach give shape to the “making hypothesis”
process, even in quesons about the mind-body theme.

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© Under License of Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
2017
Vol. 3 No. 3: 31
ACTA PSYCHOPATHOLOGICA
ISSN 2469-6676
this statement by Panksepp, "the aachment system begins in
the midbrain periaqueductal gray, very close to the area that
produces physical pain responses, suggesng that it may have
originated from the pain circuits ", from this observaon we
can beer understand how certain types of environment can be
harmful to health.
We can state that Panksepp's book, “Aecve Neuroscience:
The Foundaons of Human and Animal Emoons”, Oxford
University Press [7], will be one of the most important
contribuons to the understanding of the biology of emoons
since Darwin’s “The Expression of the Emoons in Man and
Animals”. We should also quote other books of his own, “The
Archeology of Mind: Neuroevoluonary Origins of Human
Emoon” [5]; “The Textbook of Biological Psychiatry”, (2004);
“Emoons and Psychopathology”, (1988); “Handbook of the
Hypothalamus: Behavioral Studies, Physiology and Anatomy of
the Hypothalamus” (in 4 volumes) and many others. It helped us
to understand emoons as a tangible part of our existence and
not as a mere abstracon, almost unreal, as tended to consider
the science of the century XIX unl almost the end of the XX.
The fact that emoon would have adapve value was already
in Darwin's texts (1872): The Expression of the Emoons in Man
and Animals). But with Panksepp's work, it reached a degree of
clarity and a high level of comprehensiveness that made possible
the explanaon and punctual understanding of each class of
behavior, going to its anatomo-funconal and neurochemical
descripon. As we can see in this passage of Vuilleumier:
"emoonal processes not only serve to record the value of
sensory events, but also to elicit adapve responses and modify
percepon" [8].
In short, aer his work some changes were made possible:
1. Denitely consider emoon as a eld of scienc research,
independent of the logical-philosophical dicules to
handle the subject;
2. To bring the emoonal life of the human being closer
to that of other species, making it possible for a whole
eld of research on a more substanal basis to be able
to theorecally relate the results of comparave research
with other animals and with humans;
3. To understand the human being integrated into and within
Nature, leaving the “obscured area” in which this animal
was segregated with dierence and dierenated from
the whole biological kingdom;
4. It made possible the systemac study of the dierent
classes of behaviors linked to their purpose, in relaon
to both the proximal and nal causes, in the concept of
Tinbergen, opening a wide eld of research, both basic
and clinical;
5. Finally, Panksepp, teaches us that our emoons and our
es, what moves us and drives us, our goals, are not
superior or so dierent from those of other animals ...
we are as fragile and sweet as lile lab rats, laughing and
joking, while trying to make bonds, escape pain, seek
pleasure ... While opening the eld and paving the way
for understanding complex behaviors, by situang the
problem of emoon for understanding the brain, it builds
a solid foundaon for the researches on conscience.
According to a very quick research on Google Scholar, we could
see this remarkable result: Panksepp published 648 works,
including books and periodicals, and obtained 43,337 citaons,
which proves that he has been the great and generous writer
when sharing such wide knowledge.
Only one thing comforts us in this loss: the innite beauty of an
existence that is complete, leaving behind the very meaning of
‘yes, it was worth coming!’
With gratude, we say farewell to this great scienst!

2017
ACTA PSYCHOPATHOLOGICA
ISSN 2469-6676
Vol. 3 No. 3: 31
4This article is available from: www.psychopathology.imedpub.com
References
1 Panksepp J (1982) Toward a general psychobiological theory of
emoons. Behav Brain Sci 5: 407-422.
2 Panksepp J (2017) The psycho-neurology of cross-species aecve/
social neuroscience: understanding animal aecve states as a
guide to development of novel psychiatric treatments. Curr Top
Behav Neurosci 30: 109-125.
3 Dunbar RIM (1993) Coevoluon of neocorcal size, group size and
language in humans. Behav Brain Sci 16: 681-694.
4 Tinbergen N (1963) On aims and methods of ethology. Zeitschri für
Tierpsychologie 20: 410-433.
5 Panksepp J, Biven L (2012) The archeology of mind: neuroevoluonary
origins of human emoons. WW Norton, London.
6 Wöhr M, Krach S (2016) Social behavior from rodents to humans:
neural foundaons and clinical implicaons (Current Topics in
Behavioral Neurosciences) (1st edn.). Springer: Switzerland.
7 Panksepp J (1998) Aecve Neuroscience: the foundaons of human
and animal emoons. Oxford University Press, NY, USA.
8 Vuilleumier P (2005) How brains beware: neural mechanisms of
emoonal aenon. Trends Cogn Sci 9: 585-594.