After years of clumsily trying to pick up neuroscience by osmosis from papers, I finally got myself a real book — Affective Neuroscience, by Jaak Panksepp, published in 1998, about the neuroscience of emotions in the (animal and human) brain.

What surprised me at first was how controversial it apparently was, at the time, to study this subject at all.

Panksepp was battling a behaviorist establishment that believed animals did not have feelings. Apparently the rationale was that, since animals can’t speak to tell us how they feel, we can only infer or speculate that a rat feels “afraid” when exposed to predator odor, and such speculations are unscientific. (Even though the rat hides, flees, shows stressed body language, experiences elevated heart rate, and has similar patterns of brain activation as a human would in a dangerous situation; and even though all science is, to one degree [...]

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Outline:

(03:55) SEEK: Something Wonderful is Around The Corner

(08:17) FEAR: Watch Out -- Or Flee!

(12:52) RAGE: Get Me Out Of Here! Make It Stop!

(17:27) PANIC: I Want My Mama!

(22:09) Implications

The original text contained 1 image which was described by AI.

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First published:
March 10th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/D496Lpy4PJESmdSaz/book-review-affective-neuroscience

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“Book Review: Affective Neuroscience” by sarahconstantin

LessWrong (30+ Karma)