December 1, 2016

December 1, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my twenty-fifth response to “The basic emotional circuits of mammalian brains: Do animals have affective lives?” by J. Panksepp (2011). As I write about the importance of this researcher, I want copy every sentence that is pertinent to the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Panksepp was trained as a behaviorist and he discovered the affective brain mechanisms involved in conditioning. You can also obtain this paper on Google scholar. Please read  it as I only use parts of it for my purpose.

As it deals with behaviorism I will copy quite a bit of Panksepp’s text.

“Within the subcortical terrains of raw affective experience, there are many varieties of affects. There are (i) the emotional affects, which arise from the same neural circuits that integrate and orchestrate the emotional action and autonomic responses of the brain-body continuum, (ii) the homeostatic affects that arise from intero-receptors that gauge a variety of bodily states from air-hunger to thirst, and (iii) the sensory affects that arise rather directly through our various sensory portals, especially taste, touch, smell and sound. These affects are the same “unconditioned stimuli” (UCSs) and “unconditioned responses” (UCRs) that behaviorists used to train their animals. The procedure called reinforcement (sensory cues followed quickly with sensory rewards and punishments) can be very effectively used to bring brain-learning processes under “stimulus-control”, but that ghostly process of “reinforcement” remains to be empirically demonstrated within brain dynamics to anyone’s satisfaction.”

I listened to Panksepp’s lectures and I was immediately struck by the fact that he has a lot of SVB. I have read many behaviorist papers, but none of them has ever mentioned Panksepp. How in the world is it even possible that nobody talks about this crucially important work? It is deeply sad that nobody has taken the effort to respond to him. Even if behaviorists disagree with Panksepp they should have let him know about how their views differ from his, but no behaviorist paper has been published that even mentions his work. Absolutely unbelievable!