INTRODUCTION TO THE SCIENCE OF THE AFFECTIVE MIND

The first half of this essay summarizes the evidence-based affective neuroscience view of primary-process emotional systems in the mammalian brain, a basic plan of that brain (Panksepp, 1998, 2005a). The second half focuses on the psychological complexities that emerge when this plan, so similar in all animals, interacts with the relatively blank slate of the brain-mind's higher regions that need to be epigenetically created through developmental landscapes that vary dramatically among individuals and cultures. I will focus on this complexity through a single topic, gravid with cultural implications: namely, the possibility that our current epidemic of attention deficit hyperactivity disorders (ADHD), perhaps autism too, is being precipitated as much by cultural factors as any intrinsic genetically determined biological flaws. The thesis, already evaluated in animal models, is that our children may no longer get adequate amounts of natural physical-social play – play of their own choosing. Instead, their lives are excessively regimented by adult-guided activities. Such cultural changes, along with diminishing high quality interpersonal interactions with loving adults and peers, often replaced by a deluge of electronic “care-takers” and “companions” (TV, videogames, internet, and cell-phones), are not ideally suited for the epigenetic construction of deeply pro-social brains and minds.

The diminished ability of children to obtain neuro-developmental boosts from abundant self-initiated playful social-interchange with peers – a basic social and cultural meaning-making brain mechanism – may become manifest as impulse control problems.