November 3, 2016

November 3, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my ninth response to “The Power of the Word May Reside in the Power of Affect” (2007) by Jaak Panksepp. This great neuroscientist is unknowingly promoting Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). “Our urge to speak may be more profoundly linked to social-emotional motivation than our need to promote logical ideas.” Right on! You go Panksepp! And, he states “for most people, speaking remains more of a social emotional act than a propositional-logical one.” A neuroscientist said that!

Although we are not very skilled in arranging environments in which we can engage in ongoing SVB, our brains still want it. Only in safe circumstances do we seem to be functioning properly. Our neurobiology craves SVB, but our environments are so demanding that we can’t help engaging again and again in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB).

The conundrum of not being able to create a safe environment and again and again engaging in NVB can only be solved if we pay attention to what happens within our own skin. Only when we listen to ourselves while we speak, the speaker will be perceived as his or her own listener.

By synchronizing our own speaking and listening behavior we are no longer dependent on others to produce SVB. In an ideal situation SVB would be supported by our environment, that is, by other speakers who also listen to themselves while they speak, but, as this can only be achieved after we have been introduced to the SVB/NVB distinction while we are speaking, we only have these written words to help us listen to ourselves while we speak. Writings can only help us so much….

Panksepp states “Cognition will never be free from affect; raw emotional feelings arising from ancient neural substrates that are essentially pre-propositional – cognitively objectless. These emotional substrates promote cognitive object-relations optimally through rich emotional experiences.” I think he is referring to SVB and not to NVB. NVB doesn’t promote “cognitive object-relations optimally through rich emotional experiences.” NVB impoverishes our emotional experiences.  

November 2, 2016

November 2, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my eight response to “The Power of the Word May Reside in the Power of Affect” (2007) by Jaak Panksepp. “With cortico-cognitive maturation, the diverse emotional-musical communication of infants begin to bifurcate into two seemingly distinct streams” of speech. This demonstrates that “the left hemisphere participates more in defense mechanisms than the right.” Also, this is why “patients with right hemispheric damage, following paralysis of the left side of the body” readily “deny their self-evident paralysis, a clear logical absurdity.”

To deny the existence of one’s own body is a main characteristic of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). In NVB communicators see themselves as talking heads. It is hard to put our finger on our body as embodied sound is so easily distracted from that by what we say. As we engage in NVB, we are like those patients with brain damage, who “prefer to confabulate about their lives in” what only seems to be “affectively positive, self-protective ways.” NVB is basically dissociative in nature.

Apparently, our brains work in such a way that “when the left-hemisphere is less grounded in subcortical/right hemispheric emotional “soil”, it becomes more adept at self-serving rationalizations.” Panksepp is getting really very poetic here. In NVB, we talk at each other, but only in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) do we talk with each other. The difference between SVB and NVB is in the ‘motivation’ of the speaker.

In SVB, we are always socially-motivated to speak, as the sound of the speaker’s voice has an approach-inducing and connecting quality, but in NVB, our social urges are reflexively inhibited as the voice of the speaker has an aversive, avoidance and escape-eliciting quality. We achieve “social attachment” in SVB and “separation-distress” in NVB.  

November 1, 2016

November 1, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my seventh response to “The Power of the Word May Reside in the Power of Affect” (2007) by Jaak Panksepp. According to Panksepp, the “more cognitive modes of communication” are “never completely liberated from the affective musical-motivational ground from which they arose”. We make more sense of what someone says if what we say sounds good, that is, if what we say is congruent with how we say it.

When what we say is congruent with how we say it we engage in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), but if this is not the case we engage in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). As “propositional, logic-constrained, low affect speech consolidates within the left hemisphere”, while our “prosodic-emotional poetic stream flows more forcefully through the right”, we predict that if “cognitive arguments are divorced from the affective-rhetorical power of emotional convictions, one’s ability to understand language and to attract the cognitive attentions of others suffers.”

NVB, which is forceful and therefore effortful, cannot work as well as SVB, which is playful, flexible and effortless. Simply stated SVB works better than NVB. Research has shown over and over that “when right-hemispheric prosodic and reality-principles are damaged, the left-hemisphere’s story-lines become more superficial and disconnected from the deep affective needs and life-stories of people.”

It has been found that “when left-hemispheric propositional language becomes decoupled” (as it always does in NVB) “from affective values, it readily confabulates, becoming untrustworthy and less authentic – generation semantic towers of delusional babble, often in attempts to manipulate the minds of others.” Neurobiology makes the case for SVB.   

October 31, 2016

October 31, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my sixth response to “The Power of the Word May Reside in the Power of Affect” (2007) by Jaak Panksepp. Language learning starts when we are nonverbal children. We only become verbal to the extent that nonverbal learning, which preceded verbal learning, was based on positive emotions. Negative emotions are the basis for learning in the school of coercive behavioral control. This school needs to be closed.

I am interested in positive behavioral control as it is more effective, creative and intelligent than forceful behavioral control. “Animals communicate with sounds, probably most affectively, but with more subtlety than typically imagined.” What is “typically imagined” is based on our Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Panksepp is not your typical communicator. He has a lot of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB).

Only someone with a high rate of SVB would notice that “Proto-musical competence precedes language in human mind development.” It takes a knowledgeable, sensitive and musical person like Panksepp to recognize that “Music is the “language” of emotions and its affective power arises from subcortical emotional systems.” He wants to inform the readers that “music and language capacities are tightly coupled overlapping processes of the brain” and he is already convinced that “evolutionary human communicative urges may be linked to affective-musical motivations that guide emerging social-cognitive abilities.”

Like me, Panksepp thinks outside the behaviorism-denying “cognitive box of the language instinct.” I love this emotional and philosophical man for asserting that “language arose from our emotional nature through a musical-prosodic bridge.” This bridge which is the basis of human language is more needed than ever before. We will only be able to cross this bridge if we listen to our own voice while we speak. We can bring music into our conversation by paying to attention to how we sound.