An Evolutionary Framework to Understand Foraging, Wanting, and Desire: The Neuropsychology of the SEEKING System

@article{Wright2012AnEF,
  title={An Evolutionary Framework to Understand Foraging, Wanting, and Desire: The Neuropsychology of the SEEKING System},
  author={Jason S. Wright and Jaak Panksepp},
  journal={Neuropsychoanalysis},
  year={2012},
  volume={14},
  pages={39 - 5}
}
The SEEKING system of mammalian brains needs to be understood from multiple scientific and clinical perspectives. SEEKING theory provides new neuropsychoanalytic perspectives for understanding the human mind and its behavioral and emotional disorders and considers dimensions of experience that have traditionally been subsumed under concepts such as “drives” and “motivations.” Historically these concepts became problematic because experimentalists and clinicians didn’t quite know what they were… 
View on Taylor & Francis
111 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
5
Background Citations
34
Methods Citations
2
Results Citations
2

111 Citations

Citation Type

Citation Type

Neuro-Evolutionary Foundations of Infant Minds: From Psychoanalytic Visions of How Primal Emotions Guide Constructions of Human Minds toward Affective Neuroscientific Understanding of Emotions and Their Disorders
ABSTRACT As Louis Sander understood, human infants are evolutionarily endowed with emotional minds that allow them to experience themselves as affectively vibrant creatures, who seek to be recognized…
The Psycho-Neurology of Cross-Species Affective/Social Neuroscience: Understanding Animal Affective States as a Guide to Development of Novel Psychiatric Treatments.
  • J. Panksepp
  • Psychology
    Current topics in behavioral neurosciences
  • 2017
TLDR
The genesis of depression is significantly influenced by sustained overactivity of the separation-distress PANIC system reflecting severed social bonds and the excessive "psychological pain" of loneliness, leading to a downward cascade known as psychological despair.
Toward an Understanding of the Constitution of Consciousness Through the Laws of Affect
Abundant evidence, often ignored in discussions of cognitive consciousness, is that raw affective experiences arise from diverse subcortical emotional, motivational (body homeostatic), and primal…
Brain SEEKING Circuitry in Neuroeconomics: A Unifying Hypothesis for the Role of Dopamine-Energized Arousal of the Medial Forebrain Bundle in Enthusiasm-Guiding Decision-Making
Affective shifts are critical factors in our decision-making with respect to all our survival concerns, including high cognitive ones such as those related to our economic investments and…
Reconciling cognitive and affective neuroscience perspectives on the brain basis of emotional experience
Affective Neuroscience Strategies for Understanding and Treating Depression
TLDR
It is summarized how understanding of emotional affects—especially those of separation distress, SEEKING, and PLAY, may regulate depressive affect through a focus on the following: reducing PANIC, namely, “psychic pain” with “safe opioids” such as buprenorphine; facilitating enthusiasm with deep brain stimulation of the transdiencephalic medial forebrain bundle–based SEEKING urges.
Preclinical Modeling of Primal Emotional Affects (SEEKING, PANIC and PLAY): Gateways to the Development of New Treatments for Depression
TLDR
This work describes how an understanding of these fundamental emotional circuits can promote the development of novel antidepressive therapeutics - low-dose buprenorphine to counteract depression and suicidal ideation emanating from too much psychic pain (PANIC overarousal), direct stimulation of the SEEKING system to counteract amotivational dysphoria.
Re-enacting the Bodily Self on Stage: Embodied Cognition Meets Psychoanalysis
TLDR
A possible therapeutic approach that is built upon the core role of the acting-sentient bodily self in a dynamic-social and affective environment is introduced and the psychodramatic approach will be briefly discussed in light of connectionist models, to address linguistic and methodological pivotal issues.
to Three Novel Therapeutics Affective Neuroscience Strategies for Understanding and Treating Depression : From Preclinical Models
TLDR
It is summarized how understanding of emotional affects—especially those of separation distress, SEEKING, and PLAY, may regulate depressive affect through a focus on the following: reducing PANIC, namely, “psychic pain” with “safe opioids” such as buprenorphine; facilitating enthusiasm with deep brain stimulation of the transdiencephalic medial forebrain bundle–based SEEKING urges.
Corrective biology: psychosomatics in and as neuropsychoanalysis
TLDR
This article analyses how and with what consequences body–mind relations are being modelled in the 21st century through considering the interdiscipline of neuropsychoanalysis and calls for the revivification of other ways of thinking about how human subjects—psychosomatic organisms—find ways to live, and to die.
...
1
2
3
4
5
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 299 REFERENCES
The neuro-evolutionary cusp between emotions and cognitions : Implications for understanding consciousness and the emergence of a unified mind science
TLDR
The aim of this essay is to discuss the underlying conceptual issues that must be addressed for additional progress in understanding the nature of primary process affective consciousness.
The role of brain emotional systems in addictions: a neuro-evolutionary perspective and new 'self-report' animal model.
TLDR
It is illustrated how a mammalian model of emotion (i.e. rodent ultrasonic vocalizations) may enable scientists to predict drug-related phenomena such as abuse potential, anatomical location of mediating neural substrates, and the psychological impact of withdrawal.
The “Id” Knows More than the “Ego” Admits: Neuropsychoanalytic and Primal Consciousness Perspectives on the Interface Between Affective and Cognitive Neuroscience
TLDR
The likelihood, based on abundant neuroevolutionary data, that lower brain affective phenomenal experiences provide the “energy” for the developmental construction of higher forms of cognitive consciousness is considered.
Toward a cross‐species neuroscientific understanding of the affective mind: do animals have emotional feelings?
  • J. Panksepp
  • Psychology
    American journal of primatology
  • 2011
TLDR
This essay outlines the historical forces that led to emotional feelings in animals being marginalized in behavioristic scientific discussions of why animals behave the way they do, and why mental constructs are generally disregarded in modern neuroscientific analyses.
Toward a general psychobiological theory of emotions
  • J. Panksepp
  • Psychology, Biology
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences
  • 1982
TLDR
The possibility that emotions are elaborated by transhypothalamic executive circuits that concurrently activate related behavior patterns is assessed and the manner in which learning and psychiatric disorders may arise from activities of such circuits is discussed.
A neurocognitive theory of higher mental emergence: From anoetic affective experiences to noetic knowledge and autonoetic awareness
Behavioral functions of the mesolimbic dopaminergic system: An affective neuroethological perspective
The brain's emotional foundations of human personality and the Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales
Emotional endophenotypes in evolutionary psychiatry
  • J. Panksepp
  • Psychology, Biology
    Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry
  • 2006
Psychological flexibility as a fundamental aspect of health.
...
1
2
3
4
5
...