The Journal of comparative neurology
June 1, 2016
Jaak Panksepp
54 citations
Understanding the neural basis of emotional feelings in animals, rather than just their behavior, may accelerate development of new psychiatric treatments. By studying rewarding and punishing effects of deep brain stimulation in subcortical emotional networks—including systems labeled SEEKING, RAGE, FEAR, LUST, CARE, PANIC, and PLAY—researchers have identified distinct emotion action patterns. This preclinical affective neuroscience approach has led to three potential antidepressant strategies: deep brain stimulation of the medial forebrain bundle in humans, reducing psychological pain from excessive PANIC arousal, and enhancing social joy through studies of social play in rats. The argument is that taking animal emotional feelings seriously as treatment targets could improve psychiatric intervention development.
The Journal of comparative neurology
December 1, 2020
Paul R Manger, Jerome M Siegel
21 citations
Dreams occur during human sleep, especially REM sleep, and similar physiological states exist in mammals, raising the question of whether animals experience sleep mentation. Advances in understanding sleep-stage anatomy and physiology allow a better assessment of dream mentation in nonhuman mammals. If dream mentation occurs only during REM sleep, monotremes, cetaceans, and otariid seals at sea likely lack this potential; atypical REM sleep in African elephants and Arabian oryx may alter their potential. If dream mentation occurs during both non-REM and REM sleep, all mammals could experience it, though non-REM mentation may differ in species with atypical sleep, such as aquatic mammals with unihemispheric sleep.
The Journal of comparative neurology
February 1, 2021
Robert P Vertes, Stephanie B Linley
9 citations
The brain during non-REM sleep is in an unconscious state akin to general anesthesia, making meaningful cognitive processing impossible. Waking experiences are never faithfully reproduced in sleep but appear in distorted forms. Both non-REM sleep and general anesthesia share features such as sensory blockade, immobility, amnesia, and loss of awareness, characterized by delta oscillations across the cortex, reduced neural activity especially in frontal and parietal regions, and disrupted functional connectivity in thalamocortical and corticocortical networks. Disrupting the cortex, particularly the orbitofrontal cortex, impairs higher-order cognitive functions. The profound cortical deactivation in non-REM sleep would negate any possibility of memory processing or consolidation.