More About Dr. Panksepp
Is there anything more central to the quality of our lives than how we respond emotionally to the world around us? Feelings are a central consideration in any number of academic fields, from behavioral psychology to consumer studies. And feelings are at the root of any number of psychiatric problems, from autism to depression to obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Although researchers can and do study what people feel, until relatively recently it was thought nearly impossible to engage in a rigorous scientific study of how people feel, or why we feel. But that was before the pioneering work of Jaak Panksepp, WSU’s recently named Baily Endowed Chair of Animal Well-being Science.
While pet lovers have long suspected that animals feel “human” emotions, neuroscientists were loathe to spend much time studying the issue because there was no easy way to test that hypothesis scientifically. (Mr. Ed notwithstanding, your pet can’t speak about its emotional state.)
Dr. Panksepp was willing to take that risk, and it all started with a chirping guinea pig. Everyone knows that human infants cry when separated from their mothers, but the frantic chirping of a baby guinea pig separated from its mother compelled Dr. Panksepp to begin investigating how that separation-distress response was built into animal nervous systems.
Through meticulous and painstakingly designed research spanning a 37-year career focusing on emotional sounds that animals make, Dr. Panksepp has shown that not only do animals behave emotionally, but they feel emotions, and those feelings originate in very primitive regions of the brain.
“There are instinctual responses for every one of the basic emotions,” Dr. Panksepp says. They exist in all animals, including humans, and they are built into the nervous systems as innate value systems. In humans, instinctual emotional responses are somewhat hidden because behavior is influenced by many factors, including civilized expectations. But, he says, those instinctual responses are still there and still have a huge impact on how we think, feel, and act.
In more than 300 articles and several books, including the seminal Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions (Oxford, 1998), Dr. Panksepp has created an exciting new field of research. By making the biological connection between animal and human emotional systems, he has helped make animal research an important component of psychiatric science. He also recently edited a Textbook of Biological Psychiatry (Wiley, 2004).
Dr. Panksepp’s work with rats at play has convinced him that play is crucial to healthy development of animals—or of children. It allows the executive system of the brain to mature, he says.
Play allows children to check out what they can or cannot do. Ultimately, he notes, play produces conflict, but it has to. “That’s the nature of it,” Dr. Panksepp says. “Otherwise, you don’t learn.” He believes that many children may have attention deficit problems because they are not getting enough play.
Think of a two-year-old, he says, who is full of impulsive behaviors, desires instant gratification, and constant motion. Plenty of adult-supervised but self-directed play, especially up through age six, is what helps a child move beyond early impulsive stages of development to more mature and socially desirable responses to the world. It is supervised play, he explains, that helps children learn to think before acting, delay gratification, set goals, and plan and organize their lives.
Constraining a child’s natural desire to play, either through drugs or social policy decisions, will have long-term consequences, he says. “If we as a society don’t use playfulness well we are going to have more childhood problems, and I think we already do.”
Dr. Panksepp’s research on how people feel has led him to fascinating ideas about why people feel.
“Emotions are useful tools for living,” he says. Feelings help encourage certain behaviors that enhance survival and discourage others that tend to deter it.
For instance, pain and other bad feelings signal events that are not good for you, while play and other good feelings tell you that what you are doing will probably help you live better. Thus, feelings increase your ability to survive.
Even though Dr. Panksepp’s research is basic science to better understand neural systems, he is continually working to use that understanding to develop new ideas to treat emotional problems in humans. Formerly head of the Memorial Foundation for Lost Children at Bowling Green State University, he developed a new treatment for autism.
Since arriving at WSU he has turned his attention to depression and understanding the underpinnings of positive social temperament. He is the co-director of research for the Hope for Depression Foundation in New York City.
In addition to his work at WSU, Dr. Panksepp has collaborative projects with many colleagues at other universities here and abroad. He is a Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Bowling Green State University, as well as the head of Affective Neuroscience Research at the Falk Center for Molecular Therapeutics at Northwestern University.
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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