Dr Jaak Panksepp

The late Dr Jaak Panksepp (1943 – 2017)

Dr Jaak Panksepp was the Baily Endowed Professor of Animal Well-Being Science at Washington State University, and founder of the field of Affective Neuroscience. Along with many students and colleagues, he published over 400 scientific articles, chapters and reviews devoted to elucidating the basic mechanisms of motivations and emotions as well as the fundamental nature of consciousness and self-representation in the brain.

He was the author of Affective Neuroscience: the Foundation of Human and Animal Emotions (Oxford, 1998), editor of a Textbook of Biological Psychiatry (Wiley, 2004) and seven other books incuding Archaeology of Mind (Norton, 2012).

Panksepp’s work was devoted to the analysis of emotional behaviours and their relations to models of psychiatric disorders. His main research interest was unravelling the nature of primary-process emotions in the mammalian SEEKING, RAGE, FEAR, LUST, CARE, PANIC/GRIEF, and PLAY (caps reflect a scientific terminology for primary-affective processes of the BrainMind)-and seeking linkages to new clinical insights.

His work led to a new treatment of autistic children and current work is devoted to non-pharmacological therapies for ADHD. Novel ideas for new anti-depressants and anti-suicide agents are currently being clinically evaluated.