A Tribute to Jaak Panksepp (1943-2017)

Kenneth L Davis; Christian Montag

doi:10.1017/pen.2018.5

A Tribute to Jaak Panksepp (1943-2017)

Personal Neurosci. 2018 Aug 10:1:e9. doi: 10.1017/pen.2018.5. eCollection 2018.

Authors

Kenneth L Davis¹, Christian Montag^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Pegasus International, Greensboro, NC, USA.
² Institute of Psychology and Education, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany.
³ Key Laboratory for NeuroInformation/Center for Information in Medicine, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.

Abstract

This article gives a short overview on the life and achievements of Jaak Panksepp. Jaak Panksepp dedicated his life to the study of mammalian emotions. By means of electrical stimulation of the brain and psychopharmacological challenges he carved out seven primary emotional systems being highly conserved across different species of mammals including homo sapiens. The primary emotional systems are called SEEKING, CARE, LUST, PLAY (positive emotions), and FEAR, RAGE, SADNESS (negative emotions). While his early career was characterized by the direct study of these primary emotions in mammals, in his late career he invested more and more time in applying his knowledge to different fields of psychology including personality neuroscience and psychiatry.

Keywords: Animal (non-human) models; Emotion; Jaak Panksepp; Psychopathology (general); affective neuroscience; primary emotional systems.