Research Focus
Dr. Panksepp’s present research is devoted to the analysis of the neuroanatomical and neurochemical mechanisms of emotional behaviors (in the emerging fields of affective and social neurosciences), with a focus on understanding how various affective processes are evolutionarily organized in the brain, along with the linkages to psychiatric disorders and drug addiction.
He studies the brain’s "instinctual" mechanisms of fear, anger, separation distress (panic), investigatory processes ,and anticipatory eagerness, as well as rough-and-tumble play. He is especially interested in how various brain neuropeptide systems regulate emotional feelings and social bonds.
Prior to the ongoing work on emotional systems, Dr. Panksepp studied hypothalamic mechanisms of energy balance control and neural regulation of sleep-waking states. In addition to authoring 300-plus scientific articles, he has co-edited the multivolume Handbook of the Hypothalamus and Emotions and Psychopathology, a series on advances in biological psychiatry, and most recently a textbook, Biological Psychiatry (Wiley, 2004). His other textbook, Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions (Oxford, 1998), helped inaugurate a new field of inquiry that attempts to probe the affective infrastructure of the mammalian brain.
Dr. Panksepp’s research orientation is that a detailed understanding of basic emotional systems at the neural level will highlight the basic sources of human values and the nature and genesis of emotional disorders in humans. In the 1980s he helped developed the still controversial opioid-antagonist therapy for autistic children based on pre-clinical investigations into brain circuits that control social behaviors as well as the use of melatonin in regulating common sleep-waking problems in pervasive developmental disorder.
Dr. Panksepp is pursuing new therapies for the treatment of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorders (ADHD) and depression. Many of the findings from animal models are ready to be evaluated in human psychological research. Accordingly, Dr. Panksepp is seeking to facilitate the development of new depth-psychological perspectives to understanding the human. WSU’s Center for the Study of Animal Well Being and People-Pet Partnership Program are devoted to the study and improvement of animal emotional well being.
Lecture Details
Download Dr. Panksepp's powerpoint presentation (41 MB)
More About Dr. Panksepp
News Releases
Animal Emotions Provide Clues to Autism, Other Disorders
Other Resources
Center for the Study of Autism interview
Additional biographical information
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