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.

November 23, 2016

November 23, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my seventeenth response to “The basic emotional circuits of mammalian brains: Do animals have affective lives?” Although Panksepp gives a possible neuroscientific explanation for why punishment and reward works, he is too much focused on what occurs within the skin to focus on the environmental stimuli which cause the organism to behave the way it does. It is understandable that as a neuroscientist he does.  

“One credible hypothesis is that shifting tides of neuro-affective

processes are critical for instantiating the concept of “reinforcement” within the brain. Perhaps most neuroscientists might envision this to merely reflect the strengthening of synapses via glutamate-based “long-term potentiation” type mechanisms, but one only need to point out that every emotional system of the brain has glutamatergic transmission at its core. Hence the “conceptual glue” of reinforcement” —which has remained the key concept of behavioral analysis—is actually a reflection of brain affective systems in action.”

If Panksepp would follow his own neuroscientific line of reasoning, he must come to the same conclusion as behaviorists: there is no behavior-initiating self or a behavior-causing mind. Furthermore, if Panksepp is correct, and I believe he is, his research is more in tune with behaviorists than with mentalists whose acknowledgment he seeks.

Interestingly, Panksepp’s emphasis on experience is congruent with Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). “It could be claimed that the conceptual and methodological problems we face on that road to returning experience back into brain, as key types of neural processes, especially in other animals, remains truly huge. Indeed, we have no semi-direct access to the minds of other humans, unless we believe what they say.” Once we listen to how we as humans sound and how our sound expresses how we feel, we will gain a better understanding of how animals feel.

November 22, 2016

November 22, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my sixteenth response to “The basic emotional circuits of mammalian brains: Do animals have affective lives?” At this point it is becoming clear to me how wrong Panksepp is in putting all his cards on gaining broader acceptance from the neuroscience community. In spite of the fact that “the evidence for various types of affective feelings in other mammals is now rather overwhelming,” the majority of the neuroscientists are still not listening to him. Why are knowledgeable people incapable of accepting facts which refute their beliefs?

The way of talking, which maintains beliefs that prevent people from looking at the facts, needs to be addressed before these beliefs can be changed. Panksepp’s stubborn adherence to a behavior-causing “mind” didn’t gain him any support from the behaviorist community. He once told me in an email that he had started out as a behaviorist, but he became dissatisfied with it as it. It is the Panksepp the behaviorist who writes “Wherever in the ancient subcortical reaches of the mammalian brain we evoke coherent emotional behaviors with electrical stimulation of the brain (ESB), we can also demonstrate that the central states evoked can serve as rewards and punishments.”

One moment, he uses behavioral constructs, such as “rewards and punishments”, but another moment, he refers again to the “affective aspects of mind.” He goes back and forth between behaviorism and mentalism; in the former, behavior is caused by environmental stimuli, but in the latter, behavior is assumed to be caused by the “ancient subcortical reaches of the mammalian brain.” I understand his dilemma.

Panksepp deserves credit for explaining “the fundamental nature of “reinforcement” as a brain process.” How could it have been anything else? It had to be a brain process, but this of course doesn’t change the fact that our brains are also affected by environmental stimuli. Behaviorists should be grateful for the great work of Panksepp, who gives a neuroscientific analysis of reinforcement and punishment.

November 21, 2016

November 21, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my fifteenth response to “The basic emotional circuits of mammalian brains: Do animals have affective lives?” Panksepp refers to a “dual-aspect” ontology, which can be seen as a reference to Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB).  However, he doesn’t seem to recognize that he is merely referring to another way of talking when he writes “Perhaps we neuroscientists will also one day agree (and reveal), how mind is a manifestation of brain activity, using similar dual-aspect strategies.”

Focus on “mind,” which behaviorism views as an explanatory fiction, prevents Panksepp from even realizing what he has just written. In the aforementioned statement he links agreeing (with each other) with revealing (to ourselves to each other), a phenomenon which is essential to SVB. What he describes as agreeing, I describe as understanding and what he describes as revealing, I describe as experiencing. In SVB, we will one day understand and experience ourselves and each other.

Our future is good if we are able to inhibit NVB. I disagree with Panksepp, who thinks this depends on animal research. “If so this may first happen, at a causal level, with animal models used to study the nature of affects, especially emotional rewards and punishments.” SVB doesn’t depend on animal models, but it depends on the “emotional rewards and punishments” which we offer or force while we speak.

Undoubtedly, Panksepp wants SVB. He writes “Thus, the main goal of this essay is to encourage more open-minded discussions about the variety of primary-process affective processes in mammalian brains—emotional, homeostatic and sensory feelings—and to motivate young scholars to avoid the grand mistakes of the 20th century, which in a sense were similar to those bequeathed to us by Rene Descartes.” “Open-minded discussions” are a reference to SVB and the “grand mistakes of the 20^th century” were all caused and maintained by NVB. SVB is needed to advance neuroscience.