Jaak Panksepp

Jaak Panksepp (on the right) at the promotion of honorary doctors at the University of Tartu (December 2004).

Jaak Panksepp (born June 5, 1943 in Tartu) is an Estonian-born[1] neuroscientist, a psychobiologist, the Baily Endowed Chair of Animal Well-Being Science for the Department of Veterinary and Comparative Anatomy, Pharmacology, and Physiology at Washington State University's College of Veterinary Medicine, and Emeritus Professor of the Department of Psychology at Bowling Green State University. Panksepp coined the term 'affective neuroscience',[2] the name for the field that studies the neural mechanisms of emotion. He is known in the popular press for his research on laughter in non-human animals.[3][4]

Research

Panksepp has conducted many experiments; in one with rats, he found that the rats showed signs of fear when cat hair was placed close to them, even though they had never been anywhere near a cat.[5] Panksepp theorized from this experiment that it is possible laboratory research could routinely be skewed due to researchers with pet cats.[5] He attempted to replicate the experiment using dog hair, but the rats displayed no signs of fear.[5]

In the 1999 documentary Why Dogs Smile and Chimpanzees Cry, he is shown to comment on the research of joy in rats: the tickling of domesticated rats made them produce a high-pitch sound which was hypothetically identified as laughter.

Panksepp is also well known for publishing a paper in 1979 suggesting that opioid peptides could play a role in the etiology of autism, which proposed that autism may be "an emotional disturbance arising from an upset in the opiate systems in the brain".[6]

Temple Grandin draws extensively on Panksepp's work in describing how an appreciation of the primal emotions of PLAY, PANIC/GRIEF, FEAR, RAGE, SEEKING, LUST and CARE and what triggers them can improve human care of stock animals and the welfare of companion animals.[7]

Books

See also

References

  1. http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/panksepp.htm
  2. Panksepp, J (1992). "A critical role for "affective neuroscience" in resolving what is basic about basic emotions.". Psychological Review. 99 (3): 554–60. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.99.3.554. PMID 1502276.
  3. It’s no joke: Even animals ‘laugh’ - LiveScience - MSNBC.com
  4. Panksepp, J; Burgdorf, J. (October 2000). "50k-Hz chirping (laughter?) in response to conditioned and unconditioned tickle-induced reward in rats: effects of social housing and genetic variables". Behavioral Brain Research. 115 (1): 25–38. doi:10.1016/s0166-4328(00)00238-2. PMID 10996405.
  5. 1 2 3 Grandin, Temple; Johnson, Catherine (2005). Animals in Translation. New York, New York: Scribner. p. 207. ISBN 0-7432-4769-8.
  6. Panksepp, J. (1979). "A neurochemical theory of autism". Trends in Neurosciences. 2: 174–177. doi:10.1016/0166-2236(79)90071-7.
  7. Grandin, Temple; Johnson, Catherine (2009). Animals make us human. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/23/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.