Affective consciousness: Core emotional feelings in animals and humans
- PMID: 15766890
- DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2004.10.004
Affective consciousness: Core emotional feelings in animals and humans
Abstract
The position advanced in this paper is that the bedrock of emotional feelings is contained within the evolved emotional action apparatus of mammalian brains. This dual-aspect monism approach to brain-mind functions, which asserts that emotional feelings may reflect the neurodynamics of brain systems that generate instinctual emotional behaviors, saves us from various conceptual conundrums. In coarse form, primary process affective consciousness seems to be fundamentally an unconditional "gift of nature" rather than an acquired skill, even though those systems facilitate skill acquisition via various felt reinforcements. Affective consciousness, being a comparatively intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species, should be the easiest variant of consciousness to study in animals. This is not to deny that some secondary processes (e.g., awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be evaluated in animals with sufficiently clever behavioral learning procedures, as with place-preference procedures and the analysis of changes in learned behaviors after one has induced re-valuation of incentives. Rather, the claim is that a direct neuroscientific study of primary process emotional/affective states is best achieved through the study of the intrinsic ("instinctual"), albeit experientially refined, emotional action tendencies of other animals. In this view, core emotional feelings may reflect the neurodynamic attractor landscapes of a variety of extended trans-diencephalic, limbic emotional action systems-including SEEKING, FEAR, RAGE, LUST, CARE, PANIC, and PLAY. Through a study of these brain systems, the neural infrastructure of human and animal affective consciousness may be revealed. Emotional feelings are instantiated in large-scale neurodynamics that can be most effectively monitored via the ethological analysis of emotional action tendencies and the accompanying brain neurochemical/electrical changes. The intrinsic coherence of such emotional responses is demonstrated by the fact that they can be provoked by electrical and chemical stimulation of specific brain zones-effects that are affectively laden. For substantive progress in this emerging research arena, animal brain researchers need to discuss affective brain functions more openly. Secondary awareness processes, because of their more conditional, contextually situated nature, are more difficult to understand in any neuroscientific detail. In other words, the information-processing brain functions, critical for cognitive consciousness, are harder to study in other animals than the more homologous emotional/motivational affective state functions of the brain.
Comment in
-
Panksepp's common sense view of affective neuroscience is not the commonsense view in large areas of neuroscience.Conscious Cogn. 2005 Mar;14(1):81-8. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2005.01.003. Conscious Cogn. 2005. PMID: 15766891
Similar articles
-
The basic emotional circuits of mammalian brains: do animals have affective lives?Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2011 Oct;35(9):1791-804. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2011.08.003. Epub 2011 Aug 19. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2011. PMID: 21872619 Review.
-
A neurocognitive theory of higher mental emergence: from anoetic affective experiences to noetic knowledge and autonoetic awareness.Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2011 Oct;35(9):2017-25. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2011.04.001. Epub 2011 Apr 19. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2011. PMID: 21530586 Review.
-
Toward a cross-species neuroscientific understanding of the affective mind: do animals have emotional feelings?Am J Primatol. 2011 Jun;73(6):545-61. doi: 10.1002/ajp.20929. Epub 2011 Feb 11. Am J Primatol. 2011. PMID: 21319205 Review.
-
The trans-species core SELF: the emergence of active cultural and neuro-ecological agents through self-related processing within subcortical-cortical midline networks.Conscious Cogn. 2009 Mar;18(1):193-215. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2008.03.002. Epub 2008 May 15. Conscious Cogn. 2009. PMID: 18485741
-
Brain and conscious experience.Adv Neurol. 1998;77:181-92; discussion 192-3. Adv Neurol. 1998. PMID: 9709824 Review.
Cited by
-
Mental causation: an evolutionary perspective.Front Psychol. 2024 Apr 29;15:1394669. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1394669. eCollection 2024. Front Psychol. 2024. PMID: 38741757 Free PMC article.
-
Domestication constrains the ability of dogs to convey emotions via facial expressions in comparison to their wolf ancestors.Sci Rep. 2024 May 7;14(1):10491. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-61110-6. Sci Rep. 2024. PMID: 38714729 Free PMC article.
-
Back to square one: the bodily roots of conscious experiences in early life.Neurosci Conscious. 2021 Nov 20;2021(2):niab037. doi: 10.1093/nc/niab037. eCollection 2021. Neurosci Conscious. 2021. PMID: 38633139 Free PMC article.
-
From emotional signals to symbols.Front Psychol. 2024 Apr 2;15:1135288. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1135288. eCollection 2024. Front Psychol. 2024. PMID: 38629043 Free PMC article.
-
Somatovisceral influences on emotional development.Emot Rev. 2023 Apr;15(2):127-144. doi: 10.1177/17540739231163180. Epub 2023 Mar 16. Emot Rev. 2023. PMID: 38148757 Free PMC article.
Publication types
MeSH terms
LinkOut - more resources
Full Text Sources