The Brain and Mind discussion

I would highly recommend The Brain Science Podcast
http://docartemis.com/brainsciencepod...
where an ER Physician bases each episode mostly around a Brain Science related book/author.
What is even better is that the books that have been reviewed in each podcast are also available at the Brain Science Store on Amazon
http://astore.amazon.com/docartemis-b...
and a definitive place to go to for recommendations on where to start.

Oh yes! Big yes!!!! This is one of the great podcasts out there. I can't say I loved every book but each episode was thought provoking as all he...er...heck.

For me, episode 65 about Jaak Panksepp and his book
Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions was really fascinating. It's on my TBR list. Dr. Panksepp's talks about the location of emotions in animals and humans. It was quite interesting and makes me want to read his book. Anyway, that's just one recommendation. Happy to hear the opinions of others.

I'm with Saul. Great series, and Panksepp is 100% worth reading.

Duncan wrote: "I'm with Saul. Great series, and Panksepp is 100% worth reading."

I'm very interested in having an ongoing Q&A on Panksepp. Do you mind posting here why you feel he's worth reading? Personally, I like the fact that he uses animal studies to objectively determine the existence of 7 (it's seven isn't it?) distinct emotions. In fact, I wrote a blog about his concepts and how in particular the "seek" emotion may be tied to technology's manifestation.

Would enjoy hearing your thoughts on all this.

Hey, Saul.

You could say that I am a Panksepp enthusiast because I believe he picks up where Silvan Tomkins left off: that we are "motivated" (literally moved) to act by factors that are in various parts rational and irrational, conscious and non-conscious — and that there is usually a hidden logic to the irrational and non-conscious factors in play. In other words, we may do things that are indeed irrational, but they are also logical.

Panksepp (again, like Tomkins) reveals the internal logic of our survival-based perceptual wiring in ways that clarify both the "bugs" and errors of reflexive, "automatic" processes (to use Kahnemann's term) as well as the minor victories of when we "guess right." American philosopher, logician and father of semiotics Charles Peirce (1839-1914) called the latter "abductive inferences." I think that Panksepp illustrates why we can both "guess right" and also "guess wrong" when it comes to risk, response, survival or buying a bottle of wine. Our integration into the world and our responses to it are woven through us physiologically, and Panksepp shows us where these processes come from in the animal kingdom and how they impact our capacity to respond.

The affective approach is the most "embodiment-oriented" of the schools of neuroscience, for my money. And JP always builds his arguments from the chemical substrate of psychophysiology up through to potentially cognitive and/or computational outcomes. But the route, the way the inputs and stimuli are physically integrated are affectively.

I am also very much intrigued by the "seek" phenomenon — and by the impact of surprise as a "reset" button that enables us to switch affective response systems according to fresh stimuli. The concatenated, cycling through our systems of response and orientation processes (not mechanisms) is what renders Panksepp's perspective so fresh and vivid, both in terms of what I observe introspectively, but in terms of how I see people respond in social and commercial situations. I am also very much interested in the so-called RAGE circuitry: how we leverage "anger" to marshal the energy, focus, attention and drive to correct errors and injustices in our environment. Very primordial stuff, and sadly hard to sell to my marketing clients!

There is so much to discuss...

Duncan wrote: "Hey, Saul.

You could say that I am a Panksepp enthusiast because I believe he picks up where Silvan Tomkins left off: that we are "motivated" (literally moved) to act by factors that are in variou..."

Duncan,

For some reason I overlooked your response. Though, a business trip consumed me last week and may have destroyed brain-cells devoted to this topic: let's continue nonetheless :)

Because you're well read on this topic (whereas I scratch the surface right now), allow me to ask some questions?

The affective approach is the most "embodiment-oriented" of the schools of neuroscience,

Term affective is new to me, but if my reading on this is correct, it seems to mean basic motivations behind an action. I then assume JP uses emotions as this driver? Or is the affective response system distinct from the core emotion?

Regarding "seek", I think this is special and I'd like to delve more into this point. I recall JP talking about how this particular emotion reaches up into an animal's neocortex and seems to interact with logic processors in the brain. Is that not in his book? If so, what are your thoughts on this psychophysiological based system. I suppose RAGE also works on the a similar premise. But would not RAGE use the emotion of anger at its core, whereas seek drives a solution without a great deal of energy? Are anger and seek similar things, but used at different times to solve particular problems? For instance, if you're hungry, seek is the tool to find food and feed oneself. If you're being attacked, then anger and RAGE are used fight and survive.

Let me know if you think my line of thinking is off kilter here. Just trying to find my footing.

I think they (SEEK and RAGE) are both forms of "affective greed," to use the phrase coined by Silvan Tomkins.

RAGE, and especially anger, are toxically self-stimulating emotions, so there is a certain reward already built into the experience of the emotion. Also, when you factor in contagion, there is a social dimension and status reward for expressions of anger, especially if there is a reproductive, social or financial gain within view.

Duncan wrote: "I think they (SEEK and RAGE) are both forms of "affective greed," to use the phrase coined by Silvan Tomkins."

Tompkins is new to me. But with a quick lookup I see his Affect theory involves six types: interest-excitement, enjoyment-joy, surprise-startle, distress-anguish, anger-rage, and fear-terror.

It's very similar to JP's 7 identified emotions. However JP's list was Seeking, Fear, Rage, Lust, Care, Panic, and Play. If I had to match them up then this is the result (Tomkins/JP):

interest-excitement/ seek
enjoyment-joy/play
surprise-startle/ panic
distress-anguish/ ---
anger-rage/ rage
ear-terror/Fear

Lust seems oddly missing from Tomkin's list. Maybe my source is wrong? I would have thought that's a shoe-in. Lust-try to have have sex, seems like a natural affect to me. Well...any guy I suppose :) And CARE is also not one of Tomkin's primary six. I assume it shows up somewhere else?

JP's point of view on this was simple. You stimulate specific parts of the lower limbic system and you get one of his identified 7 emotions. And if I understood things correctly, JP would attribute other emotion-like states to other areas of the brain where more complex thinking takes place.

The only way to settle things is with some test where we can accurately gauge what's going on inside the brain. We're not quite there yet.

In any event, I can agree with you that Seek and Rage both seem similar in some respects. But why, you may wonder, am I so interested in Seek? To me it can explain man's primary driver behind our desire to create technology. What was there simply to solve problems of finding food and shelter, seek got transformed into solving more complex things.

Have you read any Ellul? I have looked carefully at his book, THE TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY. This very detailed point about the desire to create technology seems to allude him.

I hope you find the above interesting.

Best

Thanks, great stuff.

There is a large and growing bibliography on Tomkins, and specifically his detachment of "lust," or the so-called "sex drive," from instinct. He wrote a brilliant piece ca. 1970 explaining that without the affect of interest, there can be no sexual activity at all. The script for sex (lust) involves surprise>interest>excitement>joy cycling through thousands of times per second.

His discussion of drives is explained by our "drive" to breath and mortal aversion to hypoxia: if you want to see drive-based behavior, remove oxygen from the environment and all consequent behavior will be entirely survival-oriented. Pure drive, pure survival instinct. The same is true with food, though a little less so. His writings here are extremely interesting.

Sex, for Tomkins, is not a drive per se because an absence of sexual gratification or release does not threaten the existence of the system. It plays a survival role for the species, but certainly not for the individual. In fact, with sexual opportunities in one's face, so to speak, one can refrain from sexual behavior — out of the lack of interest. A bevy of scantily clad 90 year old virgins works for me, or the mental image of one's ex-wife might equally ruin the moment.

[My pet theory is that the reason Viagra and Cialis have a market is because of the simple fact that over time, interest diminishes because the capacity for the same partner to induce surprise also diminishes. If anything, Viagra shifts the attentional "interest" from the Other to one's own organ. The literature on Viagra-induced relationship pathologies seemed to be growing as fast as Pfizer's stock at one point.]

So, I am firmly with Tomkins on this: Interest is the key — curiosity combined with surprise and high density pleasure all sustain renewed reallocation of investment in the "interestingness" of the object of sexual desire. And interest is a demanding affect because it directs attention, sustains focus and directs behavior all at once.

Here's the citation: Silvan Tomkins, " Affect as the Primary Motivational System," in: Magda Arnold (ed.), Feelings and Emotions (NY & London, 1970), pp. 101-110.

As for not quite being there yet, we are a indeed long way off. We've had fMRI for a little over 20 years. Where were we in terms of space exploration two decades after Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter?

Anyway, back to sex — I side with Tomkins on this one and not with JP. We are selective even at the start — not every possible opportunity for sexual release is either desirable or taken. And as you gain in experience, there are certain signals that close off "interest" or deactivate "excitement" altogether. Such mental images are routinely cited as a method of sustaining energy in order to last longer! Again, I'd cite the ex-wife phenomenon only because it's so common in the culture and the literature.

There are are few other things between ST and JP that don't map too well, either. For instance, panic for me is simply high density fear-terror, or just plain terror. Which means he has no "surprise" or resetting mechanism that modulates the transition from one affective state to another. This is critical!

Like I said, I'm a huge Panksepp fan — but there can be no doubt that Tomkins' system is a bit more comprehensive. In any event, they are both mutually illuminative.

If you're feeling adventurous, you may want to dip into a selection of Tomkins' writings about each affect under the title Shame and Its Sisters: A Silvan Tomkins Reader. Tomkins is a demanding writer, but I found that his writings were hugely impactful in developing both self-understanding as well as a better grasp of my parents, the people I work with, as well as being central to my work. Super high-yield reading, in my humble opinion.

Duncan wrote: "Thanks, great stuff.

Isn't it funny how sex becomes the all encompassing topic?

Some thoughts on what you wrote:

Sex, for Tomkins, is not a drive per se because an absence of sexual gratification or release does not threaten the existence of the system. It plays a survival role for the species, but certainly not for the individual.

Hmmm...I don't know. I'm not sure our biology or emotional system is built based on the fact there is a large population to guarantee survival of the species. True, that's the way it is today but imagine a time when man kind was hanging on by a thread. I think biology and it's supporting mental system is built to reproduce as much as possible. Worst case scenario. I can't speak for every person out there, but...uhm...clearly there are a few that think they've gotta mate as though they're the last humans on earth :)

The literature on Viagra-induced relationship pathologies seemed to be growing as fast as Pfizer's stock at one point.

LOL. This is such a good point. God knows what's going on in people's skulls when they take Viagra. But it's interesting what you bring up here. I wonder how long before they start doing brain MRIs based on someone on Viagra :) Man...someone is actually gonna get paid for that?

So, I am firmly with Tomkins on this: Interest is the key — curiosity combined with surprise and high density pleasure all sustain renewed reallocation of investment in the "interestingness" of the object of sexual desire. And interest is a demanding affect because it directs attention, sustains focus and directs behavior all at once.

I can see you're passionate (no pun intended) about Tomkins. I will stick with JP for now, but then again I need to read up on this more before really having an opinion. I certainly think there could be complex interactions between the various emotions, ones we're not aware of yet.

Here's the citation: Silvan Tomkins, " Affect as the Primary Motivational System," in: Magda Arnold (ed.), Feelings and Emotions (NY & London, 1970), pp. 101-110.

Will check up on that and get back to you.

We are selective even at the start — not every possible opportunity for sexual release is either desirable or taken. And as you gain in experience, there are certain signals that close off "interest" or deactivate "excitement" altogether.

True..., but once again, we're talking about modern society. Go back just 100k years (almost nothing on the biological clock) and consider how they behaved. I'm not so deep into anthropology but I'm guessing they were a bit less stressed about social graces. No?

There are are few other things between ST and JP that don't map too well, either. For instance, panic for me is simply high density fear-terror, or just plain terror. Which means he has no "surprise" or resetting mechanism that modulates the transition from one affective state to another. This is critical!

I need to go back and check. I would have thought that if JP says two emotional states such as panic and fear are distinctly unique, then he must have been able to reproduce these states by introducing electrical stimulation in certain parts of the brain. To me, that would support his hypothesis on all this. Maybe we can invite him to join us here and comment :) However, regarding many of the other emotional states that don't map to JP, the only way to settle it is to know what's really going on in the brain. Back to square one, though as you said, it's still interesting to consider: right or wrong.

Anyway, really good stuff so far. Keep posting.

Panksop has a new, very readable book. Archeology Of Mind and a new BSP interview.