November 28, 2016

November 28, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my twenty-second response to “The basic emotional circuits of mammalian brains: Do animals have affective lives?” I am commenting on Panksepp’s research which supports my distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB).  Read the following quote carefully as it describes these two response classes.

“To put it bluntly, the experience of pain can cause shrieking and crying in all mammals, and the stronger the pain stimulus, the stronger the vocal response. If we dull the feelings of pain (properly called sensory affects) with opiates, all behavioral indices of pain diminish in all mammalian species, just as in humans. However, there are also wonderfully positive sounds, such as those of social play related to brain SEEKING circuits and wonderful courting songs in birds, which are modulated by social neuropeptides such as endogenous opioids.”

The painful “shrieking and crying in all mammals” is the equivalent of NVB in humans, while appetitive experiences set the stage for SVB,   “wonderfully positive sounds, such as those of social play related to brain SEEKING circuits and wonderful courting songs in birds.” Yes, we can stimulate each other, while we talk, with the sound of our voice in precisely the same manner as Panksepp is stimulating his lab animals.

He found that “When we artificially activate brain emotion-behavior generating circuits, animals rapidly learn to turn off ESB (Electrical Brain Stimulation) that evokes fear and anger-type responses, and they turn on brain stimulation that generates playful sounds, exploration, sexual eagerness and maternal care.” However, in SVB we don’t use ESB, but VSB (Vocal Brain Stimulation).  Our sound induces emotions.

Panksepp wonders “Are we fooling ourselves that we have captured something very important about human experiences of pain, anger, fear and joy through such animal research? There is no empirical line of research that suggests such a dismal conclusion.” I don’t think that there is anything dismal about his conclusion. We don’t need to wait for empirical research to prove to us that SVB works for mental health clients, for students, for parents, for couples, for team members and for colleagues.

November 27, 2016

November 27, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my twenty-first response to “The basic emotional circuits of mammalian brains: Do animals have affective lives?” It is interesting that Panksepp, a neuroscientist, finds it important to write in his paper that “historically, ultra-conservative ways of thinking in science typically take a rather longer time to adjust to new realities.” What is do you think he referring to? He describes Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), the kind of interaction in which the speaker isn’t sensitive to the listener and therefore can’t adjust to the present moment.

Although, due to scientific discoveries, our thinking about events in the world has changed over time, what hasn’t changed is our way of talking. We now know earthquakes are caused by plate tectonics, but we still don’t know anything about why we can’t live in peace with each other.

Science brought us new things and has changed our lives, but it didn’t produce a new way of talking which creates and maintains healthy and happy relationships. “In brief, the discovery of emotional networks in ancient subcortical brain regions that can mediate various feelings of ‘goodness’ or ‘badness’ as monitored through behavioral choices grew steadily more robust from the early 1950s through the 1970s, with no major negations to this day.” Although we know which brain regions mediate Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), the way of talking which in which we express feelings of goodness, and NVB, the way of talking in which we express feelings of badness, this doesn’t change anything.

Only if SVB increases and NVB decreases things will be changing for the better. Then we will be able to create the “various emotional situations” that will reliably evoke “diverse emotional vocalizations” in animals and human animals. We should be grateful to Panksepp for mapping these vocalizations to “specific brain circuits, which are not all that different from primitive emotional sounds made by humans in affectively intense situations.”

November 26, 2016

November 26, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my twentieth response to “The basic emotional circuits of mammalian brains: Do animals have affective lives?” I am interested in “the use of emotional vocalizations as proxies for corresponding feeling states,” but neuroscientists aren’t likely going to teach us that in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) we express positive emotions, while in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) express negative emotions.

Why don’t we acknowledge SVB “as the key foundation for social bonding, and the neural mechanisms for rough-and-tumble PLAY being critically important, not only for development of social skills, but for social joy and even laughter?” We can’t even agree on something as simple as that as we are conditioned by and continue to be involved in NVB, which triggers “separation-distress” or “PANIC/GRIEF system.”

As a therapist, I have verified over and over again with each of my clients the SVB/NVB distinction. Panksepp is right “The implications for psychiatric issues are bound to be substantial,” but he exaggerates when he writes “it is only because of advances in brain research that credible scientific arguments can finally be advanced for the thesis that other mammals do have emotional and other affective feelings.”

Although he longs for it, Panksepp doesn’t yet acknowledge that we cannot engage in “scientific arguments” as long as we continue to have NVB. “Credibly scientific arguments” can only be advanced by speakers who engage in SVB. Anyone familiar with the SVB/NVB distinction will immediately realize that “other mammals do have emotional and other affective feelings.” It is not that we deny emotions in other individuals or other species, but it is our lack of skills to accurately describe our own emotions, which makes us incapable of recognizing them in others. This deficit will disappear when we engage in SVB more often.

November 25, 2016

November 25, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my nineteenth response to “The basic emotional circuits of mammalian brains: Do animals have affective lives?” It should come as no surprise to the reader that Panksepp, a neuroscientist, is actually advocating for a different way of talking. The old way of talking, called Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), is based on “ruthless reductionism.” It is NVB which “currently still thrives in most animal neuroscience work” as well as in any other place where people need to talk with each other.

Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), the new way of talking, on the other hand, is inclusive rather than exclusive. Without SVB Panksepp is stuck and all he can do is write another paper about what it would be like to have authentic conversation. He writes “But our conversations would be richer, and more realistic, if we lifted the restriction to use primary process mental concepts in animals work. We do need much more research and discussion using indirect dual-aspect approaches that fully respect the hypothetico-deductive methods of modern science.”

Evolutionary theory, at one point in history, was rejected by those who adhered to their religious belief. Although the majority of people now accepts it, conversations among scientists haven’t, as one would like to believe, become any “richer” or “more realistic” after that. To the contrary, as science progressed, the harsh NVB with which theoretical perspectives are defended and attacked, has only further increased.

It is not the restriction of any particular content (e.g. primary process mental concepts) that has to be lifted, but the restriction on talking itself. What “currently thrives in most animal neuroscience work” (and in other disciplines) is paper-writing and paper-reading. Due to our NVB the written word is wrongly considered to be more important than the spoken word. SVB restores the importance of speaking and listening.

November 24, 2016

November 24, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my eighteenth response to “The basic emotional circuits of mammalian brains: Do animals have affective lives?” Obviously Panksepp is unfamiliar with the Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) / Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) distinction, which would dissolve many of his doubts.

The SVB/NVB distinction deals not only with humans, it also explains aversive and appetitive animal vocalizations. 

“The other animals cannot even symbolically communicate their feelings, except perhaps for “talking” parrots and linguistically adept great apes, species that are unlikely to be used in routine brain research. Thus, it is self-evident that to proceed, we have to use other strategies to probe emotional feelings in other animals—for instance their natural emotional behaviors, especially their emotional vocalizations and we have to empirically validate such measures as behavioral proxies for the generation of novel affectively related animal behavior predictions, and thereby also provide novel, testable hypotheses about the neural nature of human feelings (who obviously can provide symbolic self-reports).” SVB is such another strategy…

Emotional vocalizations in primates have been studied by Owen and Rendall, but are not mentioned. Their affect-induction model (AIM) maps onto the SVB/NVB distinction and makes his “dual-aspect epistemology” unnecessary. Luckily, we don’t need to wait for evidence from animal researchers to learn about human emotions. Also, we don’t need neuroscientific knowledge to discriminate between SVB and NVB.

Panksepp isn’t any closer to solving communication problems than those who are unaware of his science. However, his “frequency-modulated (trill type) tickle-induced  50kHz chirps in rats reflect positive affect with evolutionary relations to human laughter” and maps onto the SVB response class in humans, while his “study of imbalances in specific affective systems in animal brains” relates to depression and to NVB.