Affective Neuroscience

Affective Neuroscience

This comprehensive text on the fundamental brain sources of human and animal feelings summarizes up-to-date information about the subcortical operating systems that organize the fundamental emotional tendencies of all mammals. Complex material is presented in a comprehensive but readable manner. The book approaches emotions from the perspective of basic emotion theory, but does not fail to address the more complex issues raised by constructionist approaches, including relations to
human consciousness. Representing a synthetic integration of vast amounts of neurobehavioral knowledge, this book may be the most important contribution to understanding the biology of emotions since Darwin's Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. Throughout, the psychiatric implications of this
type of knowledge are also addressed.

Some investigators have argued that emotions, especially animal emotions, are illusory concepts outside the realm of scientific inquiry. However, with advances in neurobiology and neuroscience, researchers are demonstrating that this position is wrong as they move closer to a lasting understanding of the biology and psychology of emotion. In Affective Neuroscience, Jaak Panksepp provides the most up-to-date information about the brain-operating systems that organize the
fundamental emotional tendencies of all mammals. Presenting complex material in a readable manner, the book offers a comprehensive summary of the fundamental neural sources of human and animal feelings, as well as a conceptual framework for studying emotional systems of the brain. Panksepp approaches
emotions from the perspective of basic emotion theory but does not fail to address the complex issues raised by constructionist approaches. These issues include relations to human consciousness and the psychiatric implications of this knowledge. The book includes chapters on sleep and arousal, pleasure and fear systems, the sources of rage and anger, and the neural control of sexuality, as well as the more subtle emotions related to maternal care, social loss, and playfulness. Representing a
synthetic integration of vast amounts of neurobehavioural knowledge, including relevant neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and neurochemistry, this book will be one of the most important contributions to understanding the biology of emotions since Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and
Animals.

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(Distinguished Professor of Psychobiology, Bowling Green State University, USA)

Inhaltsangabe

PART I: CONCEPTUAL BACKGROUND
1. Affective neuroscience: history and major concepts
2. Emotional operating systems and subjectivity: methodological problems and a conceptual framework for the neurobiological analysis of affect
3. The varieties of emotional systems in the brain: theories, taxonomies, and semantics
4. Neurostatistics: the anatomy of the brain/mind
5. Neurodynamics: the electrical languages of the brain
6. Neurodynamics: neurochemical maps of the brain
PART II: BASIC EMOTIONAL AND MOTIVATIONAL PROCESSES
7. Sleep, arousal, and mythmaking in the brain
8. SEEKING systems and anticipatory states of the nervous system
9. Energy is delight: the pleasures and pains of brain regulatory systems
10. Nature red in tooth and claw: the neurobiological sources of rage and anger
11. The sources of fear and anxiety in the brain
PART III: THE SOCIAL EMOTIONS
12. The varieties of love and lust: neural control of sexuality
13. Love and the social bond: sources of nurturance and maternal behaviour
14. Loneliness and the social bond: the brain sources of sorrow and grief
15. Rough-and-tumble play: the brain sources of joy
16. Emotions, the higher cerebral processes and the SELF: some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless night
Appendix A: Bones, brains, and human origins
Appendix B: Brain, language, and affective neuroscience
Appendix C: Dualism and the neurosciences