A neurociência afetiva de Jaak Panksepp: uma investigação sobre a gênese emocional da consciência

Abstract

Estonian neuroscientist, based in the United States, Jaak Panksepp was noted for investigating basic emotions in animals. Its central hypothesis is that such emotions are evolutionarily inherited and have neural correlates as homologous subcortical regions between various animal species. This thesis investigates his work, whose main implications relate to the articulation between emotions and consciousness. Thus, the aim of this study is to expose and analyze the conceptual framework with which Panksepp supports his hypothesis that: (i) basic emotions can be treated as discrete (as they constitute systems with typical neurophysiological and behavioral characteristics) and (ii) that they involve affects, thus constituting the basis for consciousness. A panel of the psychological and neurological theories of emotions is presented, along with the historical development of some notions of leading authors in the field, focusing on the interpretation of the meaning of their works. Panksepp’s treatment of basic emotions in animals in his work is discussed further, including the distinction between the concepts of emotions, affects, and feelings, the seven basic affective-emotional systems that the scientist has identified, and how he conceives the participation of emotional affects at the level of secondary processes of learning and memory. Reports are presented by other scientists that corroborate Panksepp’s hypotheses about animal emotions. The arguments that involve types of consciousness, levels of conscious processes, and the structure of selves that make up consciousness, elaborated by Panksepp, are reconstituted and discussed. By the very nature of the problems involved in these arguments, it is an interdisciplinary conceptual work between neuroscience and philosophy. In particular, the concept of affective consciousness and its implications are emphasized. Empirical evidence of Panksepp’s conceptual proposals is presented and the report of the famous Cambridge Conference discussed. The thesis points to the conceptual coherence and the empirical basis of Panksepp’s work which, in this way, indicates new possibilities of facing the philosophical problems related to emotions and consciousness, both in animals and in humans.