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Neuroevolutionary sources of laughter and social joy: Modeling primal human laughter in laboratory rats

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Abstract

Rats make abundant 50 kHz ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) when they play and exhibit other positive social interactions. This response can be dramatically increased by tickling animals, especially when directed toward bodily areas toward which animals direct their own play solicitations (e.g., nape of the neck). The analysis of this system indicates that the response largely occurs in positive, playful social situations, and may index willingness for social engagement, similar to human infantile laughter, which may mature into productive adult socio-sexual behaviors. There are now enough formal similarities between rat 50 kHz USVs and human laughter, to realistically hypothesize that they are neurally and functionally homologous at the subcortical level of brain organization. To help contrast this behavior with human laughter, the available evidence concerning neural organization of human laughter is summarized from brain imaging and neuropsychological perspectives. Thus, a study of 50 kHz USVs in rats may offer an animal model for studying some of the fundamental properties of laughter circuitry in humans, and the brain mechanisms that facilitate positive social engagement, in the mammalian brain. It is proposed that further study of this phenomenon may provide a theoretical as well as empirical handle on the sources of social joy within the mammalian brain.

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... They might serve as a facilitatory/regulatory tool to communicate benevolent intentions [16] and prevent aggressive escalations [17]. Play-related vocalisations have been studied in mammals, mainly within primate species [18], but also in rats [19], dogs [20], dolphins [21], and birds, including parrots and magpies [22]. ...
... Yet, other species are also ticklish. For example, the idea of tickling animals (Heterospecific Hand Play [19]) found open doors in Jaak Panksepp's laboratory [7,29], where researchers found that rats' 50 kHz ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs), usually associated with positive affective states, were significantly increased during tickling [19]. Confirming this, Rygula and colleagues [30] found that neural substrates associated with USV in rats during tickling are consistent with those generated by positive affective states in humans and include reward-associated brain areas such as mesolimbic dopamine circuits and opioid systems [31,32]. ...
... Yet, other species are also ticklish. For example, the idea of tickling animals (Heterospecific Hand Play [19]) found open doors in Jaak Panksepp's laboratory [7,29], where researchers found that rats' 50 kHz ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs), usually associated with positive affective states, were significantly increased during tickling [19]. Confirming this, Rygula and colleagues [30] found that neural substrates associated with USV in rats during tickling are consistent with those generated by positive affective states in humans and include reward-associated brain areas such as mesolimbic dopamine circuits and opioid systems [31,32]. ...
... It is crucial to highlight that the main contributions to these findings are studies, carried out through more than three decades with laboratory rats. Jaak Panksepp became quite well known for his discovery of rat vocalizations that share features of "laughter" (e.g., Panksepp, 1998Panksepp, , 2007 and its association with social engagement, pleasurable interactions and social bonds, much as in humans. The continued study of these seven systems has given rise to new approaches to human psychotherapy and to new and innovative treatments (Panksepp, 2015). ...
... There is support for considering laughter a possible cross-species behavior, at least with homologs across mammals -even with its poor visibility to the human eye or audibility to the human ear -"an ancient form of "laughter" has been documented in rodents (e.g., Panksepp, 2007;Panksepp & Burgdorf, 2003) as well as in all great apes and in siamangs (Davilla-Ross, Owren & Zimmerman, 2009). In rodents, the "laughter" homologue is triggered by tickling and playing, which is also the case with all other animals studied. ...
... In rodents, the "laughter" homologue is triggered by tickling and playing, which is also the case with all other animals studied. the vocalization in rats was discovered incidentally by Panksepp and colleagues in their lab: when they play, the rats emit a 50 kHz sound (coined "play chirps"); this sound resembles a laugh when amplified (Panksepp & Burgdorf, 2003;Panksepp, 2007) and can be produced even more by playing with the animal and tickling its belly. As a result the rat continuously produces the "play chirps" during the tickle and forms a bonding relationship with the person who tickles it. ...
Article
The socioemotional lives of animals have been brought to light over the years by studies seeking to address specific topics in animal emotion, cognition and behavior. Breakthrough information has been provided by field work with natural communities, and notable advances have stemmed from non-invasive research with captive animals and from laboratory work entailing varying degrees of invasiveness. But there is a source of information on animals that has not always been integrated in the knowledge on animals’ emotional lives: the outputs of studies where animals served as models of human emotional processes but that were seldom published as literature on animals. This article proposes an integrated view whereby the vast amount of information amassed by the brain and behavioral sciences over the course of the last 30 years on the affective experiences of animals, their triggers, biomarkers and behavioral correlates is fully integrated in an account of animal emotions. Topics where this knowledge can accommodate further integration from studies with animals models of the human mind are the parental care and different types of affective bonds; the experience of empathic reactions, the association between emotions, expressive behavior and affective bonds, and conscience. Fostering further connection between these neuroscience and behavioral studies might contribute to 1) widening the breath of measures used in assessing the well-being of animals, 2) widening criteria used by ethical committees considering studies with animals, and 3) to review some common practices that by those who have key roles in the management of wild or captive animals.
... Given the many similarities between 50 kHz chirps and human laughter, Panksepp & Burgdorf [29, p. 366] concluded that the former 'may be homologous to, or at least functionally akin' to the latter, hypothesizing that the discovery of a primal form of laughter in rats provided a new way to study the neural sources of positive social-emotional processes (i.e. joyful affect) in other mammals [31]. This research represents a milestone for both ethological and neuroscientific studies on laughter. ...
... On the ethological side, it supports an evolutionary interpretation according to which the common ancestral roots of human and animal laughter are primarily related to playful social joy and affiliation, and possibly mediated by common mechanisms based on the recruitment of the dopaminergic and the opioid systems [31,32]. It can be objected that the evolutionary distance between rodents and primates, and the less noticeable facial expressions in the former, should invite caution, and to consider rat chirps as a homoplasic behaviour (i.e. ...
... R. Soc. B 377: 20210175 anterior cingulate cortex based on its role in emotional vocalizations [31], one could argue that current neuroscientific research on the emotional network for human laughter production follows in the footsteps of Panksepp. The voluntary network, in contrast, might be a peculiar human circuit, based on connections that are not described in monkeys [63]. ...
Article
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This opinion piece aims to tackle the biological, psychological, neural and cultural underpinnings of laughter from a naturalistic and evolutionary perspective. A naturalistic account of laughter requires the revaluation of two dogmas of a longstanding philosophical tradition, that is, the quintessential link between laughter and humour, and the uniquely human nature of this behaviour. In the spirit of Provine's and Panksepp's seminal studies, who firstly argued against the anti-naturalistic dogmas, here we review compelling evidence that (i) laughter is first and foremost a social behaviour aimed at regulating social relationships, easing social tensions and establishing social bonds, and that (ii) homologue and homoplasic behaviours of laughter exist in primates and rodents, who also share with humans the same underpinning neural circuitry. We make a case for the hypothesis that the contagiousness of laughter and its pervasive social infectiousness in everyday social interactions is mediated by a specific mirror mechanism. Finally, we argue that a naturalistic account of laughter should not be intended as an outright rejection of classic theories; rather, in the last part of the piece we argue that our perspective is potentially able to integrate previous viewpoints—including classic philosophical theories—ultimately providing a unified evolutionary explanation of laughter. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Cracking the laugh code: laughter through the lens of biology, psychology and neuroscience’.
... In this regard, some play signals can be like human laughter, a signal that induces a positive affective state [28]. Indeed, by focusing on the types of 50 kHz calls most commonly emitted during play, Jaak Panksepp and Jeff Burgdorf emphasized the role of calling as an expression of a positive affective state, and suggested that this could be a homologue of human laughter [29,30]. That juvenile rats, when 'tickled' by an experimenter, emit the same types of 50 kHz calls as they do when playing with other rats [31], supports this view. ...
... The 30 rats were tested for their peer-peer social play in dyads on PNDs 26,28,30,34,36,41 and 43. The animals were paired with an unfamiliar partner (i.e. ...
Article
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Social play in rats is a highly rewarding, energetic form of social interaction and important for development of the brain and social skills. The 50 kHz ultrasonic vocalizations (USV) emitted during social play are thought to be an expression of a positive affective state (laughter), which in some situations may also function as communication signals. Heterospecific play, ‘tickling’ by an experimenter, is thought to simulate conspecific play, and has been used to improve welfare and to study the neurobiology of positive affect. Given that tickling evokes substantial amounts of USV, we investigated whether heterospecific play is simulating conspecific play by comparing USV-behaviour associations in both contexts. If the 50 kHz calls are merely an expression of ‘laughter’ then the pattern and type of emission in both contexts should be similar. By contrast, as playing with a conspecific involves a two-way exchange of signalling, the additional demands on communication should lead to a different pattern of calling. While calling was prevalent in both types of play, how the different types of 50 kHz calls are used in the two contexts differed markedly. The findings suggest that while conspecific and heterospecific play are positive experiences, tickling is not the equivalent of conspecific play. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Cracking the laugh code: laughter through the lens of biology, psychology and neuroscience’.
... Örneğin, bazal nükleus devrelerindeki GABA inhibisyonu azaldığında, muhtemelen bu alanlardaki kısmen artış gösteren dopaminerjik sinyallerle kahkahalar yükselebilir. 26 Genel olarak, bu bulgular diğer primatlardan elde edilen verilerle tutarlıdır. Jurgens, PAG yoluyla yüksek beyin bölgelerinden ve daha sonra medüller retiküler yollardan nükleus retroambiguus'un vokal motor kısmına ve traktus solitarius'un nükleuslarına giden çok çeşitli duygusal seslendirmeler üreten beyin bölgelerinin varlığına dikkat çekmiştir. ...
... 22 Mevcut analizden, dopamin blokajı ile insanlarda gülmenin azalacağı, beyin dopamin sistemlerinin nöro görüntülemedeki mezolimbik alanının özellikle neşeli gülme sırasında aktif olacağı ve bu alanlardaki glutamaterjik blokajın gülme eğilimini azaltacağı tahmin edilebilir. 26 Yakın tarihli bir çalışmada, Manninen ve arkadaşları (2017), gülmenin sosyal rolünü nörobilimsel bir bakış açısıyla incelemek için farklı bir yaklaşım benimsemiştir. Araştırmacılar gülmenin oluşumunu sağlayan sinir ağlarını incelemekten ziyade, gülmenin beyin üzerindeki etkilerine odaklanmıştır. ...
Article
Full-text available
Laughter behavior is an important interaction and communication tool in humans, whose social characteristics are the most developed. Laughter is also thought to have important contributions to health. The brain stem plays an important role in the laughing behavior, which emerges as an intellectual function of the brain, as well as the broca's area, motor cortex, basal nuclei and anterior cingulate cortex and other limbic system structures. Interestingly, the relationship of these regions with laughter has often been described in studies related to brain lesions. In our article, the brain regions related to laughing and the effects of laughter on health are discussed. The characterization of the brain regions related to laughter is based on the findings of the lesion examination studies in these areas. In this way, inferences about the physiological regulation of laughter from pathophysiological changes are aimed.
... The PLAY system characterizes intense social joy due to social engagement (e.g., festive). Activation of the PLAY system by rough-and-tumble play or tickling of rats is typically accompanied by specific ultrasonic vocalizations (chirping sounds) and might resemble laughter in humans, e.g., due to humorous cartoons or jokes (Panksepp, 2007). Intriguingly, laughter in humans and chirping sounds in rats have been described to activate the mesolimbic circuit, brain regions that have been associated with other pleasurable feelings, as well (Panksepp, 2007). ...
... Activation of the PLAY system by rough-and-tumble play or tickling of rats is typically accompanied by specific ultrasonic vocalizations (chirping sounds) and might resemble laughter in humans, e.g., due to humorous cartoons or jokes (Panksepp, 2007). Intriguingly, laughter in humans and chirping sounds in rats have been described to activate the mesolimbic circuit, brain regions that have been associated with other pleasurable feelings, as well (Panksepp, 2007). However, PLAY and the category of 'fun' are not broadly represented in the field of affective neuroscience, possibly highlighting a neglected area in research, which nevertheless make up a large part in human feelings of pleasure. ...
Article
Full-text available
Experiencing pleasure and displeasure is a fundamental part of life. Hedonics guide behavior, affect decision-making, induce learning, and much more. As the positive and negative valence of feelings, hedonics are core processes that accompany emotion, motivation, and bodily states. Here, the affective neuroscience of pleasure and displeasure that has largely focused on the investigation of reward and pain processing, is reviewed. We describe the neurobiological systems of hedonics and factors that modulate hedonic experiences (e.g., cognition, learning, sensory input). Further, we review maladaptive and adaptive pleasure and displeasure functions in mental disorders and well-being, as well as the experience of aesthetics. As a centerpiece of the Human Affectome Project, language used to express pleasure and displeasure was also analyzed, and showed that most of these analyzed words overlap with expressions of emotions, actions, and bodily states. Our review shows that hedonics are typically investigated as processes that accompany other functions, but the mechanisms of hedonics (as core processes) have not been fully elucidated.
... The PLAY system characterizes intense social joy due to social engagement (e.g., festive). Activation of the PLAY system by rough-and-tumble play or tickling of rats is typically accompanied by specific ultrasonic vocalizations (chirping sounds) and might resemble laughter in humans, e.g., due to humorous cartoons or jokes (Panksepp, 2007). Intriguingly, laughter in humans and chirping sounds in rats have been described to activate the mesolimbic circuit, brain regions that have been associated with other pleasurable feelings, as well (Panksepp, 2007). ...
... Activation of the PLAY system by rough-and-tumble play or tickling of rats is typically accompanied by specific ultrasonic vocalizations (chirping sounds) and might resemble laughter in humans, e.g., due to humorous cartoons or jokes (Panksepp, 2007). Intriguingly, laughter in humans and chirping sounds in rats have been described to activate the mesolimbic circuit, brain regions that have been associated with other pleasurable feelings, as well (Panksepp, 2007). ...
Article
Full-text available
Experiencing pleasure and displeasure is a fundamental part of life. Hedonics guide behavior, affect decision-making, induce learning, and much more. As the positive and negative valence of feelings, hedonics are core processes that accompany emotion, motivation, and bodily states. Here, the affective neuroscience of pleasure and displeasure that has largely focused on the investigation of reward and pain processing, is reviewed. We describe the neurobiological systems of hedonics and factors that modulate hedonic experiences (e.g., cognition, learning, sensory input). Further, we review maladaptive and adaptive pleasure and displeasure functions in mental disorders and well-being, as well as the experience of aesthetics. As a centerpiece of the Human Affectome Project, language used to express pleasure and displeasure was also analyzed, and showed that most of these analyzed words overlap with expressions of emotions, actions, and bodily states. Our review shows that hedonics are typically investigated as processes that accompany other functions, but the mechanisms of hedonics (as core processes) have not been fully elucidated.
... Локомоторна гра включає ходьбу, біг, стояння, активні рухи тіла, повороти, стрибки, підкидання голови тощо. Поведінка поросят не пов'язана з грою включає агресію, годівлю, відпочинок, спрямований рух тварини (не пов'язаний з грою), вияв дослідницької поведінки [73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80]. Також у світі дедалі більшої актуальності набирає проблема безболісного вирощування свиней. ...
Article
Objective. To summarise current issues related to welfare and health in pig production. Methods. Domestic and foreign sources of literature on the subject of research and their desk analytical analysis. Results. Today, animal welfare is determined by a combination of three interrelated components: the physical, mental and natural state of certain animals, as well as, of course, humane human attitude to meeting their needs. Until recently, the problems of humane treatment ofproductive animals were exclusively related to economically developed countries where intensive livestock production technologies were used. Pig farms need to have highly productive animals, adequate and balancedfeed, and use resource-saving technologies to produce breeding and marketable products at the optimum cost. Improving the efficiency of pig production primarily has a negative impact on the welfare of pigs. At the same time, it should be understood that, in general, pigs are raised to produce meat and lard products, which is directly related to their slaughter and, accordingly, the taking of their lives. Therefore, the needs of pigs will not be fully met. However, the basic needs - the so-calledfive freedoms of animals - must be met. A detailed grouping of approaches to determining animal welfare is formed in three main aspects: physical condition, mental condition and naturalness. It should be borne in mind that the satisfaction of specific needs in the natural environment does not always ensure their full satisfaction in the two aspects ofphysical and mental health. In the case of pig breeding, it is necessary to take into account the consequences of long term targeted selection of the main breeds and significant modification of their representatives compared to wild forms. The provision of air, water and feed for pigs is critical and should be provided in full. However, this is not always taken into account on Ukrainian pig farms. In addition, the welfare of pigs is inextricably linked and directly depends on the health of the animals. Conclusions. The review of literature sources to summarise current issues related to welfare in pig production indicates that there are a number of issues to be addressed in Ukraine. First and foremost, we are talking about EU legislation that should be implemented in domestic production, which is especially relevant on Ukraine's path to full EU membership. With regard to the existing pig welfare issues, the list of methods and approaches for determining certain indicators is gradually expanding, but it should be borne in mind that welfare in pig production is not limited to pig housing. These are issues related to the transport and slaughter of pigs, aspects that synergise with the subsequent safety of pig products. Of particular importance are the issues in which pig welfare intersects with biosecurity and ensuring appropriate animal health. Key words: pigs, welfare, animal health, housing, feeding, productivity, commercial pork production.
... Локомоторна гра включає ходьбу, біг, стояння, активні рухи тіла, повороти, стрибки, підкидання голови тощо. Поведінка поросят не пов'язана з грою включає агресію, годівлю, відпочинок, спрямований рух тварини (не пов'язаний з грою), вияв дослідницької поведінки [73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80]. Також у світі дедалі більшої актуальності набирає проблема безболісного вирощування свиней. ...
Article
Objective. To summarise current issues related to welfare and health in pig production. Methods. Domestic and foreign sources of literature on the subject of research and their desk analytical analysis. Results. Today, animal welfare is determined by a combination of three interrelated components: the physical, mental and natural state of certain animals, as well as, of course, humane human attitude to meeting their needs. Until recently, the problems of humane treatment ofproductive animals were exclusively related to economically developed countries where intensive livestock production technologies were used. Pig farms need to have highly productive animals, adequate and balancedfeed, and use resource-saving technologies to produce breeding and marketable products at the optimum cost. Improving the efficiency of pig production primarily has a negative impact on the welfare of pigs. At the same time, it should be understood that, in general, pigs are raised to produce meat and lard products, which is directly related to their slaughter and, accordingly, the taking of their lives. Therefore, the needs of pigs will not be fully met. However, the basic needs - the so-calledfive freedoms of animals - must be met. A detailed grouping of approaches to determining animal welfare is formed in three main aspects: physical condition, mental condition and naturalness. It should be borne in mind that the satisfaction of specific needs in the natural environment does not always ensure their full satisfaction in the two aspects ofphysical and mental health. In the case of pig breeding, it is necessary to take into account the consequences of long term targeted selection of the main breeds and significant modification of their representatives compared to wild forms. The provision of air, water and feed for pigs is critical and should be provided in full. However, this is not always taken into account on Ukrainian pig farms. In addition, the welfare of pigs is inextricably linked and directly depends on the health of the animals. Conclusions. The review of literature sources to summarise current issues related to welfare in pig production indicates that there are a number of issues to be addressed in Ukraine. First and foremost, we are talking about EU legislation that should be implemented in domestic production, which is especially relevant on Ukraine's path to full EU membership. With regard to the existing pig welfare issues, the list of methods and approaches for determining certain indicators is gradually expanding, but it should be borne in mind that welfare in pig production is not limited to pig housing. These are issues related to the transport and slaughter of pigs, aspects that synergise with the subsequent safety of pig products. Of particular importance are the issues in which pig welfare intersects with biosecurity and ensuring appropriate animal health. Key words: pigs, welfare, animal health, housing, feeding, productivity, commercial pork production.
... Hedonic state is expressed predominantly by frequency-modulated 50 kHz vocalizations (Burgdorf et al. 2011), and emission of these calls is proportional to the intensity of the positive state (Hinchcliffe et al. 2020). Prolonged emission of 50 kHz vocalizations has been proposed as the ancestral equivalent of human laughter, particularly human childhood laughter and social joy (Panksepp and Burgdorf 2000;Panksepp 2007). ...
Article
Full-text available
Emotional arousal is caused by the activity of two parallel ascending systems targeting mostly the subcortical limbic regions and the prefrontal cortex. The aversive, negative arousal system is initiated by the activity of the mesolimbic cholinergic system and the hedonic, appetitive, arousal is initiated by the activity of the mesolimbic dopaminergic system. Both ascending projections have a diffused nature and arise from the rostral, tegmental part of the brain reticular activating system. The mesolimbic cholinergic system originates in the laterodorsal tegmental nucleus and the mesolimbic dopaminergic system in the ventral tegmental area. Cholinergic and dopaminergic arousal systems have converging input to the medial prefrontal cortex. The arousal system can modulate cortical EEG with alpha rhythms, which enhance synaptic strength as shown by an increase in long-term potentiation (LTP), whereas delta frequencies are associated with decreased arousal and a decrease in synaptic strength as shown by an increase in long-term depotentiation (LTD). It is postulated that the medial prefrontal cortex is an adaptable node with decision making capability and may control the switch between positive and negative affect and is responsible for modifying or changing emotional state and its expression.
... The results were in line with previous studies where physiological synchrony was reported to decrease when the felt distance between participants was larger (Marci & Orr, 2006) and to increase when the participants were performing a joint task (Mayo et al., 2021). It has been suggested that laughter serves a role in bonding between participants (Panksepp, 2007). In this study, laughter in couple therapy was possibly related to participants relieving tension via laughter after intense emotional work. ...
Article
Full-text available
Objective. This exploratory study investigated the association between interpersonal movement and physiological synchronies, emotional processing, and the conversational structure of a couple therapy session using a multimodal, mixed-method approach. Method. The video recordings of a couple therapy session, in which the participants’ electrodermal activity was recorded, were analyzed. The session was divided into topical episodes, a qualitative analysis was conducted on each topical episode’s emotional aspects, conversational structure and content. In addition, movement and physiological synchrony were calculated in each topical episode. Regression models were used to discover the associations between qualitative variables and synchronies. Results. Physiological synchrony was associated with the emotional aspects of the session and to episodes in which the spouses’ relationship was addressed, while movement synchrony was only related to emotional valence. No association between synchrony and conversational structure was found. Conclusion. The findings suggest that physiological and movement synchrony play distinct roles in psychotherapy. The exploratory study sheds light on the association between momentary synchrony, emotions, and conversational structure in a couple therapy session. Clinical and methodological significance. This study demonstrates the potential of a systematic multimodal investigation of synchrony in shorter episodes, which opens up new possibilities for identifying various meanings of synchrony. Keywords: interpersonal synchrony, physiological synchrony, movement synchrony, couple therapy, emotion, conversation
... Важливим тестовим параметром стану свиней є оцінка їх гральної активності. Вважається, що суб'єктивно гра є вираженням задоволеного стану тварини [51]. В більшості гра виявляється тваринами лише тоді, коли всі інші їх потреби є вирішеними -тварини вільні від голоду, холоду, стресу тощо [52]. ...
Article
Full-text available
Ethological observation and behavioral monitoring are important indicators for assessing the state of health, determining the level of well-being, and predicting the productive qualities of animals in productive pig farming. An important factor is also the possibility of using behavioral indicators for early diagnosis and monitoring of the course of diseases in pigs of different ages and areas of use. Behavioral tests are used to evaluate the nervous system, reactivity, reproductive and technological qualities of animals. There are many types of behavioral tests. As a rule, the same tests can explain one or more aspects of an animal's behavior. it was established that the following tests are most often used to assess animal behavior: backtest, test for a new object, new environment, person, new animal, etc. One of the most common tests to determine the behavior of pigs is the backtest. It is used to determine the stress resistance of animals. To do this, the piglet is placed on its back for 60 seconds and the number of struggle attempts and its sound response are determined. As a result of the conducted test, piglets were divided into animals with high resistance and low resistance. According to the authors, the behavioral reaction of piglets during the backtest at the beginning of life can indicate the level of coping with stressful situations at an older age. Pig backtesting demonstrated a relationship between the degree of resistance that occurs early in life and a variety of behavioral and physiological responses in fattening pigs. The human test is used to assess aggressive and social behavior, to determine the animal's emotional state, in particular fear, as an instinct for self-preservation. The novel object test can be used to study search and exploratory behavior. The novel objects tested were a rope, a pile of soil, an experimental glove, a ball game, a rubber duck, and a pile of leaves. An important test parameter of the condition of pigs is the assessment of their playing activity. It is believed that, subjectively, play is an expression of the satisfied state of the animal. The study of animal behavior is an important tool for assessing the conditions of keeping and feeding, the level of well-being, and the cognitive-emotional state of animals. Appropriate use of behavioral tests also allows for the assessment and prediction of features of social behavior, reproductive status and potential productive qualities of an animal. Key words: behavior, pigs, physiological state, productivity, methodology.
... First, the discovery that the same regions controlling the emotional motor pathway for laughter are also associated with the genesis of its positive affective valence is in line with Jaak Panksepp's prediction that "the mechanisms of raw emotional feelings are very closely linked to the emotional instinctual action systems of the brain" (Panksepp, 2007), fostering a longstanding tradition that dates back to William James's influential theory of emotion. Certainly, the time is not yet ripe to explain the interplay between this network of areas, and to what extent some of them exert an inhibitory function over other regions associated with negative emotions, as suggested by Zauli et al. (2022) for the case of the ACC-amygdala connectivity. ...
... Human laughter is a non-verbal emotional expression, characterized by sequences of regular short bursts of exhalations [1][2][3]. Laughter is recognized cross-culturally [4], and humans are not the only animals that laugh: vocalizations associated with tickling have been described in other apes [5] and in rats [6]. Play vocalizations, which may form evolutionary precursors to laughter, are found in a very wide range of animals, including kea parrots, cows and weasels [7]. ...
Article
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Robert Provine made several critically important contributions to science, and in this paper, we will elaborate some of his research into laughter and behavioural contagion. To do this, we will employ Provine's observational methods and use a recorded example of naturalistic laughter to frame our discussion of Provine's work. The laughter is from a cricket commentary broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1991, in which Jonathan Agnew and Brian Johnston attempted to summarize that day's play, at one point becoming overwhelmed by laughter. We will use this laughter to demonstrate some of Provine's key points about laughter and contagious behaviour, and we will finish with some observations about the importance and implications of the differences between humans and other mammals in their use of contagious laughter. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Cracking the laugh code: laughter through the lens of biology, psychology and neuroscience’.
... By implication, at least the vocalised part of human laughter may have first evolved in the common ancestor of apes and humans. Other scientists argue that an analogue of play laughter can even be found in rats, which emit high-frequency sounds as a part of their social interactions (Panksepp, 2007). ...
Article
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Why do we leak lubricant from the eyes to solicit comfort from others? Why do we bare our teeth and crinkle our faces to express non-aggression? The defensive mimic theory proposes that a broad range of human emotional expressions evolved originally as exaggerated, temporally extended mimics of the fast, defensive reflexes that normally protect the body surface. Defensive reflexes are so important to survival that they cannot be safely suppressed; yet they also broadcast information about an animal's internal state, information that can potentially be exploited by other animals. Once others can observe and exploit an animal's defensive reflexes, it may be advantageous to the animal to run interference by creating mimic defensive actions, thereby manipulating the behaviour of others. Through this interaction over millions of years, many human emotional expressions may have evolved. Here, human social signals including smiling, laughing and crying, are compared component-by-component with the known, well-studied features of primate defensive reflexes. It is suggested that the defensive mimic theory can adequately account for the physical form of not all, but a large range of, human emotional expression.
... The onset of bipedal locomotion, increased breath control, vocalization of short simple utterances, and inward-outward breath in chimpanzees are recognized as turning points in the human evolution of humor ( Tickle-induced laughter Provine, 2017). has been experimentally recorded in rats (Panksepp, 2007; 2000; Panksepp & Burgdorf, 2003). The evolution of language generally and humor specifically have been viewed as a vocal extension of physical grooming that promotes bonding (Vaid, 1999). ...
Article
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Humor and laughter are ecumenical phenomena. Jokes, wit, funny narratives, irony, satire, sarcasm, the ludicrous, puns, double entendres, slips of the tongue, and comical have universal appeal across all ages and different cultures. Even as the subjects covered by humor vary, all of them have a few typical characteristics and unique functions. Several immense benefits of a few laughs every day are recorded. There are no overarching theories to explain humor across all age groups. Broadly, there are classified by their content and source of origin. This review attempts to outline as many of them before summing the need for more empirical data-backed evidence-based research in the future in this less opted area of study.
... As apparent (Fig. 6A), some clusters of USFs (e.g., 15, 16) contained a significant representation of all types of experimental sessions (all genotypes and both familiarity levels). Nonetheless, other clusters (e.g., [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] contained almost solely USFs of Het or KO Shank3-deficient rats. These results suggested different USVs emitted during social encounters between Shank3-deficient rats and their WT littermates or SD rats. ...
Article
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Background Various mammalian species emit ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs), which reflect their emotional state and mediate social interactions. USVs are usually analyzed by manual or semi-automated methodologies that categorize discrete USVs according to their structure in the frequency-time domains. This laborious analysis hinders the effective use of USVs as a readout for high-throughput analysis of behavioral changes in animals. Results Here we present a novel automated open-source tool that utilizes a different approach towards USV analysis, termed TrackUSF. To validate TrackUSF, we analyzed calls from different animal species, namely mice, rats, and bats, recorded in various settings and compared the results with a manual analysis by a trained observer. We found that TrackUSF detected the majority of USVs, with less than 1% of false-positive detections. We then employed TrackUSF to analyze social vocalizations in Shank3 -deficient rats, a rat model of autism, and revealed that these vocalizations exhibit a spectrum of deviations from appetitive calls towards aversive calls. Conclusions TrackUSF is a simple and easy-to-use system that may be used for a high-throughput comparison of ultrasonic vocalizations between groups of animals of any kind in any setting, with no prior assumptions.
... Other primates and even non-primate mammals, such as dogs and rats, produce protolaughter during play (Bryant & Aktipis, 2014;Davila Ross et al., 2009;Panksepp, 2007;Simonet et al., 2005;Vettin & Todt, 2005). As a play signal, laughter conveys harmless intentions (much like smiles) and helps initiate and prolong play by signaling the nonseriousness of the play behaviors (Pellis & Pellis, 1996) and influencing the affective state of the recipient (Owren & Bachorowski, 2003). ...
Article
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Laughter and smiles co-occur and accomplish similar communicative tasks. Certain smiles and laughter elicit positive affect in the sender and the recipient, serving as social rewards. Other smiles and laughter lack this positivity but retain a message of harmlessness and affiliation that lubricates the interaction. And finally, some smiles and laughter convey disapproval or dominance in a less serious way than more overt displays (e.g., frowns). But work on the social functions of smiles and laughter has progressed independently. We ask whether smiles and laughter are judged as more alike if they are high on the same social functional dimensions. First, online participants’ (N = 244) judged the similarity of a set of validated reward, affiliation, and dominance smiles to each other, resulting in a 2-dimensional semantic smile space. Then we inserted laughter clips (rated on the social functional dimensions in prior work) into the semantic smile space using new participants’ (N = 1089) responses on a smile-laughter similarity task. The laugh samples grouped in the smile space according to their previously determined social function, suggesting participants’ judgments about smile-laughter similarity were partly guided by the reward, affiliation, and dominance values of the displays. Trial-level analyses indicate reward and affiliation smiles were most likely to be matched to reward and affiliation laughs, respectively, but dominance displays were more complicated. This suggests perceivers judge the meaning of smiles and laughs along reward, affiliation, and dominance dimensions even without verbal prompts. It also deepens our understanding of the functional overlap of smiles and laughter.
... Thus, vocalizations are often considered as indicators of the valence of an individual's affective state. For instance, laboratory rats emit ultrasonic 'chirping' vocalizations when tickled, which have been considered as a form of 'laughter', as in apes (Davila-Ross et al., 2009) and in humans (Panksepp, 2007b;Panksepp & Burgdorf, 2010). ...
Thesis
Les mécanismes qui sous-tendent la personnalité animale (c.-à-d., les différences individuelles de comportement stables à travers le temps et les contextes) sont encore mal compris. Il a été suggéré que la personnalité pourrait émerger à partir de différences individuelles dans les réactions émotionnelles. Cette thèse a pour objectif d’étudier comment la tendance à l’exploration, l’un des traits de personnalité les plus étudiés, est liée aux différences individuelles d’émotions, à différentes classes d’âge chez deux rongeurs d’origine sauvage. Chaque chapitre aborde un composant d’une réaction émotionnelle (comportement, cognition et physiologie), afin d’évaluer la valence ou l’intensité de l’expérience émotionnelle. Tout d’abord, nous avons montré que le taux d’appels d’isolement pouvait être utilisé pour caractériser les profils émotionnels de jeunes souris domestiques, celui-ci étant stable durant trois jours et dans trois situations stressantes. Deuxièmement, nos résultats ont suggéré qu’une tendance plus forte à l’exploration pourrait être liée à une plus grande tendance à exprimer des états affectifs négatifs (c.-à-d., un biais de jugement plus négatif).Troisièmement, nous avons constaté que les souris glaneuses plus exploratrices étaient caractérisées par une réactivité plus forte du système sympathique, exprimée par des températures périphériques de la queue plus basses, peu de temps après une procédure de manipulation brève. Dans l'ensemble, les résultats de ce projet de recherche contribuent à la compréhension de la base émotionnelle des traits de personnalité et soulignent l'importance de prendre en compte l'individualité lors de l'évaluation des émotions.
... The maximal rate of reduction in overall expected free energy will be found in situations where agents are able to simultaneously balance imperatives for maximizing the intrinsic value of information/exploration with the extrinsic value of realizing preferred world states. This situation may be referred to as play, or "PLAY" [386,392,393] -potentially subjectively accompanied by "flow" states [394]-which, in maximizing reward, represents attracting states for organisms that places them precisely where they ought to be to maximize learning and evolutionary fitness [395]. The balanced conditions of play attract agents to a zone of proximal development [396]-or "edge of the adjacent possible" [397,398], and also the "edge of chaos" [239]-where learning rate is optimal, creating neither overly nor underly challenging conditions for promoting increasingly skillful engagement with the world [399,400]. ...
Article
Full-text available
Drawing from both enactivist and cognitivist perspectives on mind, I propose that explaining teleological phenomena may require reappraising both “Cartesian theaters” and mental homunculi in terms of embodied self-models (ESMs), understood as body maps with agentic properties, functioning as predictive-memory systems and cybernetic controllers. Quasi-homuncular ESMs are suggested to constitute a major organizing principle for neural architectures due to their initial and ongoing significance for solutions to inference problems in cognitive (and affective) development. Embodied experiences provide foundational lessons in learning curriculums in which agents explore increasingly challenging problem spaces, so answering an unresolved question in Bayesian cognitive science: what are biologically plausible mechanisms for equipping learners with sufficiently powerful inductive biases to adequately constrain inference spaces? Drawing on models from neurophysiology, psychology, and developmental robotics, I describe how embodiment provides fundamental sources of empirical priors (as reliably learnable posterior expectations). If ESMs play this kind of foundational role in cognitive development, then bidirectional linkages will be found between all sensory modalities and frontal-parietal control hierarchies, so infusing all senses with somatic-motoric properties, thereby structuring all perception by relevant affordances, so solving frame problems for embodied agents. Drawing upon the Free Energy Principle and Active Inference framework, I describe a particular mechanism for intentional action selection via consciously imagined (and explicitly represented) goal realization, where contrasts between desired and present states influence ongoing policy selection via predictive coding mechanisms and backward-chained imaginings (as self-realizing predictions). This embodied developmental legacy suggests a mechanism by which imaginings can be intentionally shaped by (internalized) partially-expressed motor acts, so providing means of agentic control for attention, working memory, imagination, and behavior. I further describe the nature(s) of mental causation and self-control, and also provide an account of readiness potentials in Libet paradigms wherein conscious intentions shape causal streams leading to enaction. Finally, I provide neurophenomenological handlings of prototypical qualia including pleasure, pain, and desire in terms of self-annihilating free energy gradients via quasi-synesthetic interoceptive active inference. In brief, this manuscript is intended to illustrate how radically embodied minds may create foundations for intelligence (as capacity for learning and inference), consciousness (as somatically-grounded self-world modeling), and will (as deployment of predictive models for enacting valued goals).
... Impaired individuals are at risk for learning deficits, anxiety, depression, addictions, personality disorders, and neuroendocrine diseases such as diabetes, tumors, cardiovascular disease and autoimmune disorders (Edes & Crews, 2017, pp. 45-48;McKlveen et al, 2015;Panksepp, 2007;Lomanowska, et al, 2011;Schneider et al, 2002;Schulkin, 2004;Tsigos et al, 2016;Wright & Panksepp, 2012). Antisocial personality disorders are associated with crime, corruption and authoritarianism (Fitzgerald & Demakis, 2007;Walsh & Yun, 2014). ...
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Complex brain-environment interactions influence biological systems organization and early childhood development affecting local cultural traditions and political behavior. One of the trajectories human development may take involves early childhood adversity (ELA) and the construction of antisocial personality traits consistent with conditional adaptation and autocratic governance. Neuroscientific evidence shows that motivation system processes implicated in essential behavior operate at a preconscious level, which would suggest that lasting effects of early life conditions may play a role at least as important as conscious ideological choice in the generation and support of autocratic states.
... Weisfeld was infl uenced by Jaak Panksepp's ideas concerning the relationship between laughter and social play. As Panksepp has demonstrated, young rats respond to tickling with ultrasonic chirps, evidently homologous to laughter, and the same vocalization is used by them without tickling, as a play signal (Panksepp and Burgdorf, 2003;Panksepp, 2005Panksepp, , 2007. Gargalesis as a form of mild playful aggression is especially typical of apes, specifi cally chimpanzees (Fagen, 1981, p. 109). ...
Book
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... In the AVPR1b knockout mouse, female dyads exhibit fewer USVs that also occur at lower frequencies in a resident-intruder test, more 30 than 50 kHz USVs [171]. The speculation is that the 50 kHz USVs may represent more positive social interactions, as described earlier in rats [172], such that less activation of the AVPR1b is associated with more positive social behavior. ...
Chapter
The neuroendocrine control of ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) in rodents is a relatively understudied field; nonetheless, interesting findings regarding hormone-behavior relationships have emerged. Here, we focus on five rodent species in which most of this work has been done: golden hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus), house mice (Mus musculus), California mice (Peromyscus californicus), Alston’s singing mice (Scotinomys teguina), and rats (Rattus norvegicus). Many studies focus on sociosexual behavior and sex steroid hormones, however, there is a growing body of literature that probes other aspects of the impacts of neuroendocrine systems on rodent USVs. Using a comparative approach, we identify five major hormone-behavior concepts that are supported in the literature by at least one rodent species. Notably, the production of USVs in rodents can occur in the absence or presence of another individual and is particularly sensitive to social context. This leads us to ask whether (1) social context is critical for identifying sex steroid hormonal effects on USVs and whether (2) the internal energetic state, as represented by hunger hormones, is associated with changes in USVs. (3) We also review evidence for rapid effects of steroid hormone compounds on USVs and (4) research examining USVs as indicators of positive and negative affective states through the lens of hormones and neuroendocrine compounds. (5) Finally, because of the well-known effects of vasopressin and oxytocin on many social behaviors, including vocalizations, we examine the relationship of USV production to these neuropeptide hormones. Overall, there is a relative dearth of information on the function of many of the rodent USVs, with the exception of mate attraction, making it difficult to identify whether the effects of neuroendocrine compounds on USVs have an impact on social interactions, but emerging technology and call analysis tools are expected to advance our knowledge in this area. Through a comparative approach, this review highlights both common themes and a diversity of functions that arise from neuroendocrine influences on USV production.
... Access to a wheel also serves as a reward for maze performance (Livesey et al., 1972). Rats running in the wheels (or approaching the wheels) make 50-kHz ultrasonic chirps (Heyse et al., 2015), which is an expression of joyful emotions (Panksepp, 2007). Activity wheels are frequently introduced to rodent cages for environmental enrichment, and their salubrious effects are well documented (e.g., Brandão & Mayer, 2011;Goodrick, 1980;Maniam & Morris, 2010;Olson et al., 2006;Van Praag et al., 2000). ...
Article
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Wheel running establishes aversion in rats to a flavored solution consumed shortly before the running. Many studies have shown that this is a case of Pavlovian conditioning, in which the flavor and running respectively act as the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the unconditioned stimulus (US). The present article introduces some procedural variables of this running-based flavor aversion learning (FAL), including subjects, CS agents, US agents, and drive operations. This article also summarize various behavioral features of Pavlovian conditioning demonstrated in running-based FAL including the law of contiguity despite long-delay learning, extinction and spontaneous recovery, CS-preexposure effect, remote and proximal US-preexposure effects, degraded contingency effect, inhibitory learning by backward conditioning, stimulus overshadowing, associative blocking, and higher-order contextual control. Also reviewed are several hypotheses proposed for the underlying psychophysiological causes of running-based FAL (activation of mesolimbic dopamine system, gastrointestinal discomfort, motion sickness, energy expenditure, general stress, and anticipatory contrast). At the end of the article, we visit the question of most general interest about running-based FAL: why pleasurable activity of voluntary running yields aversive learning in rats.
... There is little scientific literature on the experience of pleasure in nonhuman animals, and only one author has attempted a synthesis (Balcombe 2006(Balcombe , 2009. Pleasure has an important evolutionary role in motivating and reinforcing adaptive behaviors in man and other animals (Cabanac 1971(Cabanac , 2005, and it finds expression in a broad range of vertebrate taxa (e.g., Balaskó & Cabanac 1998, Bshary & Würth 2001, Panksepp 2007, Widowski & Duncan 2000. The wrongfulness of murder is due more to the loss of future pleasures than to the pain of death. ...
... There is evidence that cues that predict social reward can become valuable as humans learn to respond faster to stimuli that become associated with positive social reinforcement (Jones et al., 2011) and monkeys preferred stimuli that predicted a reward delivery to a conspecific more than the stimuli that predicted no reward delivery (Chang et al., 2011). In rats, it was found that observing another rat being rewarded is (vicariously) rewarding by itself as it is accompanied by 50 kHz vocalizations, indicative of a positive appetitive state (Burgdorf et al., 2011;Panksepp, 2007), and dopamine release in the NAcc of the observer rat (Kashtelyan et al., 2014). Indeed, playback of 50 kHz leads to both an approach response (Wö hr and Schwarting, 2007) and results in dopamine release in the Nucleus Accumbens NAcc (Willuhn et al., 2014). ...
Article
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Many species, including rats, are sensitive to social signals and their valuation is important in social learning. Here we introduce a task that investigates if mutual reward delivery in male rats can drive associative learning. We found that when actor rats have fully learned a stimulus-self-reward association, adding a cue that predicted additional reward to a partner unblocked associative learning about this cue. By contrast, additional cues that did not predict partner reward remained blocked from acquiring positive associative value. Importantly, this social unblocking effect was still present when controlling for secondary reinforcement but absent when social information exchange was impeded, when mutual reward outcomes were disadvantageously unequal to the actor or when the added cue predicted reward delivery to an empty chamber. Taken together, these results suggest that mutual rewards can drive associative learning in rats and is dependent on vicariously experienced social and food-related cues.
... There is evidence that cues that predict social reward can become valuable as humans learn to respond faster to stimuli that become associated with positive social reinforcement (Jones et al., 2011) and monkeys preferred stimuli that predicted a reward delivery to a conspecific more than the stimuli that predicted no reward delivery (Chang et al., 2011). In rats, it was found that observing another rat being rewarded is (vicariously) rewarding by itself as it is accompanied by 50 kHz vocalizations, indicative of a positive appetitive state (Burgdorf et al., 2011;Panksepp, 2007), and dopamine release in the NAcc of the observer rat (Kashtelyan et al., 2014). Indeed, playback of 50 kHz leads to both an approach response (Wö hr and Schwarting, 2007) and results in dopamine release in the Nucleus Accumbens NAcc (Willuhn et al., 2014). ...
Article
Full-text available
Many species, including rats, are sensitive to social signals and their valuation is important in social learning. Here we introduce a task that investigates if mutual reward delivery in male rats can drive associative learning. We found that when actor rats have fully learned a stimulus-self-reward association, adding a cue that predicted additional reward to a partner unblocked associative learning about this cue. By contrast, additional cues that did not predict partner reward remained blocked from acquiring positive associative value. Importantly, this social unblocking effect was still present when controlling for secondary reinforcement but absent when social information exchange was impeded, when mutual reward outcomes were disadvantageously unequal to the actor or when the added cue predicted reward delivery to an empty chamber. Taken together, these results suggest that mutual rewards can drive associative learning in rats and is dependent on vicariously experienced social and food-related cues.
... There is evidence that cues that predict social reward can become valuable as humans learn to respond faster to stimuli that become associated with positive social reinforcement (Jones et al., 2011) and monkeys preferred stimuli that predicted a reward delivery to a conspecific more than the stimuli that predicted no reward delivery (Chang et al., 2011). In rats, it was found that observing another rat being rewarded is (vicariously) rewarding by itself as it is accompanied by 50 kHz vocalizations, indicative of a positive appetitive state (Burgdorf et al., 2011;Panksepp, 2007), and dopamine release in the NAcc of the observer rat (Kashtelyan et al., 2014). Indeed, playback of 50 kHz leads to both an approach response (Wö hr and Schwarting, 2007) and results in dopamine release in the Nucleus Accumbens NAcc (Willuhn et al., 2014). ...
Article
Full-text available
Many species, including rats, are sensitive to social signals and their valuation is important in social learning. Here we introduce a task that investigates if mutual reward delivery in male rats can drive associative learning. We found that when actor rats have fully learned a stimulus-self-reward association, adding a cue that predicted additional reward to a partner unblocked associative learning about this cue. By contrast, additional cues that did not predict partner reward remained blocked from acquiring positive associative value. Importantly, this social unblocking effect was still present when controlling for secondary reinforcement but absent when social information exchange was impeded, when mutual reward outcomes were disadvantageously unequal to the actor or when the added cue predicted reward delivery to an empty chamber. Taken together, these results suggest that mutual rewards can drive associative learning in rats and is dependent on vicariously experienced social and food-related cues.
... Tamoxifen decreases the hyper-locomotion induced by oubain (Valvassori et al., 2017a(Valvassori et al., , 2017b, amphetamine (Einat et al., 2007;Sabioni et al., 2008), and sleep deprivation (Abrial et al., 2014;Armani et al., 2012). Tamoxifen's efficacy in mania is also suggested by its lithium-like ability to decrease amphetamine-induced 50-kH ultrasonic vocalizations (Pereira et al., 2014), which are markers of a positive affective state in rats (Panksepp, 2007). ...
Article
Epidemiological, clinical, and basic research over the past thirty years have described the benefits of estrogen on cognition, mood, and brain health. Less is known about tamoxifen, a selective estrogen receptor modifier (SERM) commonly used in breast cancer that is able to cross the blood-brain barrier. In this article we review the basic pharmacology of tamoxifen, as well as its effects on cognition and mood. The literature reveals an overall impairing effect of tamoxifen on cognition in breast cancer patients, hinting at central antiestrogen activity. On the other hand, tamoxifen demonstrates promising effects in psychiatric disorders, like bipolar disorder, where its therapeutic action may be independent of interaction with estrogen receptors. Understanding the neuropsychiatric properties of SERMs like tamoxifen can guide future research to ameliorate unwanted side-effects and provide novel options for difficult to treat disorders.
... The maximal rate of reduction in overall expected free energy will be found in situations where agents are able to simultaneously balance imperatives for maximizing both the intrinsic value of information/exploration, as well as the extrinsic value of realizing preferred world states. This situation may be referred to as play, or "PLAY" (Panksepp, 1998(Panksepp, , 2007)-often subjectively experienced as "flow" states (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997)-which, in maximizing reward, represents an attracting state for an organism that places it precisely where it ought to be in order to maximize learning and evolutionary fitness (Kiverstein et al., 2019). That is, the balanced conditions of play attract agents to a zone of proximal development (Vasileva and Balyasnikova, 2019)-or "edge of the adjacent possible" (Kauffman and Clayton, 2006;Kauffman, 2014), and also the "edge of chaos" -where learning rate is optimal, creating conditions that are neither overly or underly challenging for promoting skillful engagement with the world (Buchsbaum et al., 2012;Dhawale et al., 2019). ...
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Here, I provide clarifications and discuss further issues relating to Safron (2020), “An Integrated World Modeling Theory (IWMT) of consciousness: Combining Integrated Information and Global Workspace Theories with the Free Energy Principle and Active Inference Framework; towards solving the Hard problem and characterizing agentic causation”. As a synthesis of major theories of complex systems and consciousness, with IWMT we may be able to address some of the most difficult problems in the sciences. This is a claim deserving of close scrutiny and much skepticism. What would it take to solve the Hard problem? One could answer the question of how it is possible that something like subjectivity could emerge from objective brain functioning (i.e., moving from a third person to a first person ontology), but a truly satisfying account might still require solving all the “easy” and “real” problems of consciousness. In this way, IWMT does not claim to definitively solve the Hard problem, as explaining all the particular ways that things feel across all relevant aspects of experience is likely an impossible task. Nonetheless, IWMT does claim to have made major inroads into our understanding of consciousness, and here I will attempt to justify this position by discussing challenging problems and outstanding questions with respect to philosophy, (neuro)phenomenology, computational principles, practical applications, and implications for existing theories of mind and life.
... The maximal rate of reduction in overall expected free energy will be found in situations where agents are able to simultaneously balance imperatives for maximizing the intrinsic value of information/exploration with the extrinsic value of realizing preferred world states. This situation may be referred to as play, or "PLAY" [390,396,397] -potentially subjectively accompanied by "flow" states [398]-which, in maximizing reward, represents attracting states for organisms that places them precisely where they ought to be to maximize learning and evolutionary fitness [399]. The balanced conditions of play attract agents to a zone of proximal development [400]-or "edge of the adjacent possible" [401,402], and also the "edge of chaos" [243]-where learning rate is optimal, creating neither overly nor underly challenging conditions for promoting increasingly skillful engagement with the world [403,404]. ...
Preprint
Full-text available
Drawing from both enactivist and cognitivist perspectives on mind, I propose that explaining teleological phenomena may require reappraising both “Cartesian theaters” and mental homunculi in terms of embodied self-models (ESMs), understood as body maps with agentic properties, functioning as predictive-memory systems and cybernetic controllers. Quasi-homuncular ESMs are suggested to constitute a major organizing principle for neural architectures due to their initial and ongoing significance for solutions to inference problems in cognitive (and affective) development. Embodied experiences provide foundational lessons in learning curriculums in which agents explore increasingly challenging problem spaces, so answering an unresolved question in Bayesian cognitive science: what are biologically plausible mechanisms for equipping learners with sufficiently powerful inductive biases to adequately constrain inference spaces? Drawing on models from neurophysiology, psychology, and developmental robotics, I describe how embodiment provides fundamental sources of empirical priors (as reliably learnable posterior expectations). If ESMs play this kind of foundational role in cognitive development, then bidirectional linkages will be found between all sensory modalities and frontal-parietal control hierarchies, so infusing all senses with somatic-motoric properties, thereby structuring all perception by relevant affordances, so solving frame problems for embodied agents. Drawing upon the Free Energy Principle and Active Inference framework, I describe a particular mechanism for intentional action selection via consciously imagined (and explicitly represented) goal realization, where contrasts between desired and present states influence ongoing policy selection via predictive coding mechanisms and backward-chained imaginings (as self-realizing predictions). This embodied developmental legacy suggests a mechanism by which imaginings can be intentionally shaped by (internalized) partially-expressed motor acts, so providing means of agentic control for attention, working memory, imagination, and behavior. I further describe the nature(s) of mental causation and self-control, and also provide an account of readiness potentials in Libet paradigms wherein conscious intentions shape causal streams leading to enaction. Finally, I provide neurophenomenological handlings of prototypical qualia including pleasure, pain, and desire in terms of self-annihilating free energy gradients via quasi-synesthetic interoceptive active inference. In brief, this manuscript is intended to illustrate how radically embodied minds may create foundations for intelligence (as capacity for learning and inference), consciousness (as somatically-grounded self-world modeling), and will (as deployment of predictive models for enacting valued goals).
... However, in species like primates, laboratory and companion animals as well as humans 2,5 , play increase has been observed also in situations with threats to fitness or in aversive situations. Considering neurobiological evidence, play is likely to be a subjectively pleasurable activity for animals, as for humans 6,7 . Play can be categorized into four different play types; social, object, predatory or locomotor play 8 , each consisting of specific elements of play behaviour. ...
Article
Full-text available
This study investigates the dynamics of play behaviour within groups of four juvenile pigs and uses a novel clustering and statistical modelling approach to describe new details in how individuals play with a familiar object (toy rope). We examined complex state sequence data collected during a 30 min home pen play test, using the package TraMineR, where the states were defined as object play, locomotor/social play and no play. From behavioural observations, and based on the relative proportion of the different types of object play observed, each individual was later categorised as an initiator or joiner type of player. Initiators were found to be more solitary and to show more object play whereas joiners were more social and showed less object play. The majority of groups did not have an initiator type of player, yet on average they played more. Despite strong group and type of player effects, we identified three general individual play patterns. On a group level, our results demonstrate differences in how a period of playing develops, that playing with the object simultaneously occurs more often in groups than expected by chance and that the number of pigs playing together is stable over time.
... Such ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) reflect the animal's emotional state and facilitate or inhibit social interaction (Brudzynski, 2013;Knutson et al., 2002;Wohr and Schwarting, 2013). Therefore, they have gained interest as a proxy model for speech and language (Arriaga et al., 2012;Castellucci et al., 2016; Hammerschmidt, 2011a) as well as for affective vocal communication in humans (Burgdorf et al., 2011;Panksepp, 2007). ...
Preprint
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Rodents emit various social ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs), which reflect their emotional state and mediate social interaction. USVs are usually analyzed by manual or semi-automated methodologies categorizing discrete USVs according to their structure in the frequency-time domains. This laborious analysis hinders effective use of USVs for screening animal models of human pathologies associated with modified social behavior, such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Here we present a novel, automated methodology for analyzing USVs, termed TrackUSF. To validate TrackUSF, we analyzed a dataset of mouse mating calls and compared the results with a manual analysis by a trained observer. We found that TrackUSF was capable of detecting most USVs, with less than 1% of false-positive detections. We then employed TrackUSF to social vocalizations in Shank3-deficient rats, a rat model of ASD and found, for the first time, that these vocalizations exhibit a spectrum of deviations from pro-social calls towards aggressive calls.
Article
While rodent models are vital for studying mental disorders, the underestimation of construct validity of fear indicators has led to limitations in translating to effective clinical treatments. Addressing this gap, we systematically reviewed 5054 articles from the 1960 s, understanding underlying theoretical advancement, and selected 68 articles with at least two fear indicators for a three-level meta-analysis. We hypothesized correlations between different indicators would elucidate similar functions, while magnitude differences could reveal distinct neural or behavioral mechanisms. Our findings reveal a shift towards using freezing behavior as the primary fear indicator in rodent models, and strong, moderate, and weak correlations between freezing and conditioned suppression ratios, 22-kHz ultrasonic vocalizations, and autonomic nervous system responses, respectively. Using freezing as a reference, moderator analysis shows treatment types and fear stages significantly influenced differences in magnitudes between two indicators. Our analysis supports a two-system model of fear in rodents, where objective and subjective fears could operate on a threshold-based mechanism.
Article
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The brown rat (Rattus norvegicus) is one of the major animals both in the laboratory and in urban centers. Brown rats communicate various types of information using pheromones, the chemicals that mediate intra-species communication in minute amounts. Therefore, analyses of pheromones would further our understanding of the mode of life of rats. We show that a minute amount of 2-methylbutyric acid (2-MB) released from the neck region can ameliorate fear responses both in laboratory rats and in wild brown rats. Based on these findings, we conclude that 2-MB is an appeasing pheromone in the brown rat. A better understanding of rats themselves would allow us to perform more effective ecologically based research on social skills and pest management campaigns with low animal welfare impacts, which might contribute to furthering the advancement of science and improving public health.
Chapter
This collection examines the many internal and external factors affecting cognitive processes. Editor Shulamith Kreitler brings together a wide range of international contributors to produce an outstanding assessment of recent research in the field. These contributions go beyond the standard approach of examining the effects of motivation and emotion to consider the contextual factors that may influence cognition. These broad and varied factors include personality, genetics, mental health, biological evolution, culture and social context. By contextualizing cognition, this volume draws out the practical applications of theoretical cognitive research while bringing separate areas of scholarship into meaningful dialogue.
Article
Main aim of this study is to determine what causes humor, and secondarily, to find out why rhythmic laughter is its expression. In this review, we have analyzed the characteristics of humor and laughter, their effects on health and social behavior, and their correlations with several areas of the brain. Then, we have described the features of laughter, its rhythmic shape and its correlations with other rhythmic human behaviors. We have noticed that the most plausible theory for humor is that of incongruity/resolution, where a) an incongruous event or object provokes a sense of wonder, and b) it is followed by something that reassures the bystanders about its innocuity; but c) not all incongruities provoke humor, but just those that introduce something stiff and stereotyped into a vital and fluid event. What this study adds to what is known, is that not all incongruities produce humor, but only those between a living process and any stereotipy or stiffness we find in it. Laughter is the stigmatization of this unnatural incongruity, through its loud and rhythmic shape, as a sort of signal of ceased alert after the shock induced by what seems hazardous to the fluidity of life.
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The Weight of Images explores the ways in which media images can train their viewers’ bodies. Proposing a shift away from an understanding of spectatorship as being constituted by acts of the mind, this book favours a theorization of relations between bodies and images as visceral, affective engagements that shape our body image - with close attention to one particularly charged bodily characteristic in contemporary western culture: fat. The first mapping of the ways in which fat, gendered bodies are represented across a variety of media forms and genres, from reality television to Hollywood movies, from TV sitcoms to documentaries, from print magazine and news media to online pornography, The Weight of Images contends that media images of fat bodies are never only about fat; rather, they are about our relation to corporeal vulnerability overall. A ground-breaking volume, engaging with a rich variety of media and cultural texts, whilst examining the possibilities of critical auto-ethnography to unravel how body images take shape affectively between bodies and images, this book will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, media, cultural and gender studies, with interests in embodiment and affect.
Book
The human imagination manifests in countless different forms. We imagine the possible and the impossible. How do we do this so effortlessly? Why did the capacity for imagination evolve and manifest with undeniably manifold complexity uniquely in human beings? This handbook reflects on such questions by collecting perspectives on imagination from leading experts. It showcases a rich and detailed analysis on how the imagination is understood across several disciplines of study, including anthropology, archaeology, medicine, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, and the arts. An integrated theoretical-empirical-applied picture of the field is presented, which stands to inform researchers, students, and practitioners about the issues of relevance across the board when considering the imagination. With each chapter, the nature of human imagination is examined – what it entails, how it evolved, and why it singularly defines us as a species.
Preprint
Many species, including humans, are sensitive to social signals and their valuation is important in social learning. When social cues indicate that another is experiencing reward, they could convey vicarious reward value and prompt social learning. Here, we introduce a task that investigates if vicarious reward delivery in male rats can drive reinforcement learning in a formal associative learning paradigm. Using the blocking/unblocking paradigm, we found that when actor rats have fully learned a stimulus-self reward association, adding a cue that predicted additional partner reward unblocked associative learning about this cue. In contrast, additional cues that did not predict partner reward remained blocked from acquiring associative value. Preventing social signal exchange between the partners resulted in cues signaling partner reward remaining blocked. Taken together, these results suggest that vicarious rewards can drive reinforcement learning in rats, and that the transmission of social cues is necessary for this learning to occur.
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Adult rats spontaneously vocalize in ultrasonic frequencies. Although these ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) have been described as by-products of locomotor activity or social signals, accumulating evidence suggests that they may also index anticipatory affective states. Converging ethological, pharmacological, and brain stimulation research indicates that whereas long low-frequency (> 0.3-s, ∼22-kHz) USVs occur during anticipation of punishment or avoidance behavior, short, high-frequency (< 0.3-s, ∼50-kHz) USVs typically occur during anticipation of reward or approach behavior. Thus, long 22-kHz USVs may index a state of negative activation, whereas short, 50-kHz USVs may instead index a state of positive activation. This hypothesis has theoretical implications for understanding the brain circuitry underlying mammalian affective states and clinical applicability for modeling hedonic properties of different psychotropic compounds.
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The authors provide initial documentation that juvenile rats emit short, high-frequency ultrasonic vocalizations (high USVs, similar to 55 kHz) during rough-and-tumble play. In an observational study, they further observe that these vocalizations both correlate with and predict appetitive components of the play behavioral repertoire. Additional experiments characterized eliciting conditions for high USVs. Without prior play exposure, rats separated by a screen vocalized less than playing rats, but after only 1 play session, separated rats vocalized more than playing rats. This finding suggested that high USVs were linked to a motivational state rather than specific play behaviors or general activity. Furthermore, individual rats vocalized more in a chamber associated with play than in a habituated control chamber. Finally, congruent and incongruent motivational manipulations modulated vocalization expression. Although play deprivation enhanced high USVs, an arousing but aversive stimulus (bright light) reduced them. Taken together, these findings suggest that high USVs may index an appetitive motivation to play in juvenile rats.
Article
Full-text available
Rough and tumble (R&T) play is a unique set of behaviors that can be reliably distinguished from aggression and other childhood activities. Although it may be the most fundamental form of play, it has received comparatively little experimental attention in the human species. Forty children, ages three to six, were allowed to play in pairs (10 male pairs, 10 female pairs) during a 30 minute videotaped session with no toys available while music played in the background during every other five-minute time period. The incidence frequency of children's play and related behavioral activities were scored using 20 behavioral categories. The major findings show only modest gender differences in the frequency of play behaviors in such controlled social encounters; the main difference is that boys engaged in slightly more physical play solicitations than girls. Music facilitated General Motor Activities (e.g., Running and Walking behaviors), but not specific R&T play actions (e.g., Wrestling, Ventral and Dorsal contacts). Finally, most play behaviors as well as general activities declined systematically over the course of each recording session. This experiment highlights how human social play can be systematically studied in a controlled laboratory setting. Aggr. Behav. 29:539–551, 2003. © 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
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Drawing upon ten years of research into the most common—yet complex and often puzzling—human behavior. Dr. R. Provine, the world's leading scientific expert on laughter, investigates various aspects of laughter: (1) its evolution; (2) its role in social relationships; (3) its contagiousness; (4) its neural mechanisms; and (5) its health benefits. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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Humor is a vital component of human well-being. Neuroimaging studies conducted with adults indicate that humor activates specific brain regions, including the temporo-occipito-parietal junction (TOPJ), involved in incongruity resolution, and mesolimbic regions, involved in reward processing. However, no study to date has used neuroimaging to examine humor in typically developing children. Here, we illuminate the neural network involved in the detection and appreciation of humor in childhood. Fifteen typically developing children (ages, 6–12 years) were invited to watch and respond to video clips while neural activity was imaged with a 3T GE Discovery MR750 scanner. Before presentation during functional imaging, the clips were evaluated by age-matched controls and were representative of three categories: Funny, Positive (enjoyable but not funny), and Neutral (not intended to evoke any emotional response). We found TOPJ and mesolimbic activation in children's response to humor, suggesting these regions may form a humor-essential neural network already present in childhood. Furthermore, in a novel comparison of Funny to Positive stimuli, we found that bilateral TOPJ activation may be specific to humor processing and not part of a general constellation of neural activity in response to reward. Finally, we observed greater activation in the inferior frontal gyrus and nucleus accumbens in younger participants, indicating humor activation intensity changes during development. By providing a crucial link in studying the neurodevelopment of humor processing across the lifespan, our findings contribute valuable information about the evolution of how children understand their world.
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Presents an integrative perspective on cognitive-affective development which emphasizes the function of the infant's smile. The role of psychophysiological processes in the expression of positive affect is examined from the onset of the earliest endogenous smiles to the emergence of mature smiling and laughter. A tension-release hypothesis is formulated, which is complementary to social and cognitive theories of smiling and has the advantage of pointing to the function of the smile for the infant. The congruence of smiles following mastery and smiles following excitation is emphasized. Analysis of developmental changes in the "semantics" of the smile illustrates a number of descriptive developmental principles, including the following: (a) Developmental sequences may be repeated during the development of the same phenomenon. (b) With age, the infant becomes increasingly active in producing and mastering its own experiences. (c) Social and individual functions of early behavior often converge in promoting accommodation to and assimilation of novel events. (d) Fear and joy, wariness and smiling, have close functional relationships with respect to coping with novelty. (e) Cognitive and social-emotional aspects of development are inseparable. (55 ref)
Book
An in-depth exploration of animals' capacity for pleasure.
Book
Laurent Joubert (b. 1529) was an important figure in the medical world of the French Renaissance. His monumental Treatise on Laughter provides categories and examples of the laughable. The work describes laughter, its causes and effects, its types and differences. His subdivisions and categories, along with their examples, furnish today's critic and reader with a Renaissance vision of comic commonplaces. It is this vision that may prove to be of great value in analyzing comic literature of the Renaissance. © 1980 by The University of Alabama Press. All rights reserved.
Article
Play fighting in its most elaborate form involves nonagonistic wrestling between pairmates, where one partner. grabs, holds, bites, or otherwise contacts the other. Such play occurs in the absence of the functional consequences associated with serious fighting (e.g., resource acquisition or protection). Typically, the biting, nosing, or grooming contact during play fighting is directed at specific body rai gets. House mice have been classified as a species that lacks such play, even though play fighting is present in closely related species such as the rat. In this study, six litters of C57 mice were observed daily from the week before weaning until the week after Meaning (15-30 days postnatally). Thirty-min videotaped records Mere collected daily for each litter. Consistent with other studies, over 85% of all play involved locomotor play, and most of the social play involved noncontact locomotion (86%). However, a rudimentary pattern of the "attack and defense" typical of play fighting was found to occur, albeit at a low frequency (2% of all play). Most playful attacks involved snout contact with the partner's rump, but evidence is provided that suggests that this rump contact may be transitory, with the nape area being the primary target for play. Most of the playful attacks elicited playful defense (97%), which in all cases involved the defender evading such contact by leaping or running away, or by dodging laterally away from the attacker. Therefore, there appears to be directed playful attacks in this species, with defense limited to evasion. Defensive tactics leading to wrestling were never observed. That is, play fighting in mice involves only a small subset of what other species, such as rats, exhibit. Nonetheless, the basic components of attack and defense are present in mice. (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Chapter
That the cerebral hemispheres are requisite for the spontaneous, directed activities of terrestrial vertebrates has been well known since the last century. As Ferrier (1876) noted, if a decerebrated animal “be left to itself, undisturbed by any form of external stimulus, it remains fixed and immovable on the same spot, and unless artificially fed, dies of starvation....” As has since been repeatedly confirmed, the neuraxis below the level of the hemispheres contains the neural apparatus required for posture and locomotion and the integrated performance of bodily actions involved in self-preservation and procreation. Since the cerebral hemispheres are essential for psychological functions, they may appropriately be referred to as the psychencephalon.
Book
Some investigators have argued that emotions, especially animal emotions, are illusory concepts outside the realm of scientific inquiry. With advances in neurobiology and neuroscience, however, researchers are proving this position wrong while moving closer to understanding the biology and psychology of emotion. In Affective Neuroscience, Jaak Panksepp argues that emotional systems in humans, as well as other animals, are necessarily combinations of innate and learned tendencies; there are no routine and credible ways to really separate the influences of nature and nurture in the control of behavior. The book shows how to move toward a new understanding by taking a psychobiological approach to the subject, examining how the neurobiology and neurochemistry of the mammalian brain shape the psychological experience of emotion. It includes chapters on sleep and arousal, pleasure and pain systems, the sources of rage and anger, and the neural control of sexuality. The book will appeal to researchers and professors in the field of emotion.
Article
Patients with pathological laughter and crying (PLC) are subject to relatively uncontrollable episodes of laughter, crying or both. The episodes occur either without an apparent triggering stimulus or following a stimulus that would not have led the subject to laugh or cry prior to the onset of the condition. PLC is a disorder of emotional expression rather than a primary disturbance of feelings, and is thus distinct from mood disorders in which laughter and crying are associated with feelings of happiness or sadness. The traditional and currently accepted view is that PLC is due to the damage of pathways that arise in the motor areas of the cerebral cortex and descend to the brainstem to inhibit a putative centre for laughter and crying. In that view, the lesions \`disinhibit' or \`release' the laughter and crying centre. The neuroanatomical findings in a recently studied patient with PLC, along with new knowledge on the neurobiology of emotion and feeling, gave us an opportunity to revisit the traditional view and propose an alternative. Here we suggest that the critical PLC lesions occur in the cerebro-ponto-cerebellar pathways and that, as a consequence, the cerebellar structures that automatically adjust the execution of laughter or crying to the cognitive and situational context of a potential stimulus, operate on the basis of incomplete information about that context, resulting in inadequate and even chaotic behaviour.
Article
The recent discovery that rats can be tickled suggests a deeper understanding of human laughter. We laugh when a system we share with other mammals is disinhibited. Laughter can thus be induced by direct action on the brain. In ordinary life, we have one physical response, laughing, but it can be induced by three very different stimuli or circumstances. One, we laugh when tickled. Two, we laugh for purely convivial, social reasons. Three, we laugh at jokes, wit, and less intellectual stimuli-like pratfalls and practical jokes. Leaving direct action on the brain aside, we can hypothesize that the latter three all involve the same psychological situation. Laughter is induced by, first, a mild, sudden, and playful threat to our ongoing process of maintaining and re-creating a personal style of responding to many things besides jokes followed by, second, the nullification of that mild threat.
Article
Modest advances are being made in understanding the neurology and functions of laughter. The discovery of tickle-induced “laughter” in animals should facilitate the characterization of this basic emotional response of the mammalian brain. The existence of such vocal activities in species other than humans (e.g., rats) suggests that the fundamental brain processes for joyful affect may have emerged early in vertebrate brain evolution. Here, I summarize the little that we know about the evolutionary and brain sources of laughter, and how the accompanying positive emotions may solidify social bonds within the mammalian brain. Discovery of unique neurochemistries that specifically promote laughter and joy may provide clues for development of new classes of antidepressants.
Article
Some of the personality characteristics of infants emerge from the positive and negative interactions of their brain emotional strengths with world events. Positive emotional systems appear to operate as attractors that capture cognitive spaces, leading to their broadening, cultivation, and development. Negative emotions tend to constrain cognitive activities to more narrow and obsessive channels. One aim of healthy development is to generate harmonious, well-integrated layers of emotional and higher mental processes, as opposed to conflicts between emotional and cognitive experiences. To understand such processes scientifically, we need to conceptualize the deep nature of the emotional brain and the psychiatric difficulties that can emerge from underlying imbalances. Obviously, one has to view the infant as a coherent entity rather than a conglomeration of neurological parts—but a scientific understanding of how their fundamental brain emotional systems may operate (based on the detailed neurobehavioral study of other mammals), may provide new ways to conceptualize how different social environments may modify those paths. Herein, I will highlight areas of research we might cultivate to promote a deeper understanding of key neuro-developmental issues. The basic premise is that with the emergence of habitual capacities to project their emotions into the world, infants gradually come to see their environments as fundamentally friendly places or uncaring and threatening ones. A great deal of this presumably emerges from brain systems that control sadness and joy. Those brain processes, along with developmental implications, are discussed in some detail. ©2001 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.
Article
Aims. Currently, methylphenidate (MPH, trade name Ritalin) is the most widely prescribed medication for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We examined the ability of repeated MPH administration to produce a sensitized appetitive eagerness type response in laboratory rats, as indexed by 50-kHz ultrasonic vocalizations (50-kHz USVs). We also examined the ability of MPH to reduce play behavior in rats which may be partially implicated in the clinical efficacy of MPH in ADHD. Design. 56 adolescent rats received injections of either 5.0 mg/kg MPH, or vehicle each day for 8 consecutive days, and a week later received a challenge injection of either MPH or vehicle. Measurements. Both play behavior (pins) and 50-kHz USVs were recorded after each drug or vehicle administration. Results. MPH challenge produced a substantial 73% reduction in play behavior during the initial treatment phase, and during the last test (1 week post drug), 50-kHz USVs were elevated approximately threefold only in animals with previous MPH experience. Conclusions. These data suggest that MPH treatment may lead to psychostimulant sensitization in young animals, perhaps by increasing future drug-seeking tendencies due to an elevated eagerness for positive incentives. Further, we hypothesize that MPH may be reducing ADHD symptoms, in part, by blocking playful tendencies, whose neuro-maturational and psychological functions remain to be adequately characterized.
Article
The goal of this study was to evaluate affective changes induced during mental imaging of instinctual action patterns. Subjects were first trained to simulate the bodily rhythms of laughter and crying and were then trained to image these processes without any movement. The mere imagination of the motor imagery of laughter and crying were sufficient to significantly facilitate happy and sad mood ratings as monitored by subjective self-report. In contrast, no changes in mood were reported while imaging the affectively neutral task of walking. The work suggests that motor imagery is sufficient to modify emotional feelings, suggesting the feasibility of this method for brain imaging of emotional processes.
Article
Drawing from an affect-induction model of laughter (Bachorowski & Owren, 2001; Owren & Bachorowski, 2002), we propose that "antiphonal" laughter--that is, laughter that occurs during or immediately after a social partner's laugh--is a behavioural manifestation of a conditioned positive emotional response to another individual's laugh acoustics. To test hypotheses concerning the occurrence of antiphonal laughter, participants (n = 148) were tested as part of either same- or mixed-sex friend or stranger dyads, and were audiorecorded while they played brief games intended to facilitate laugh production. An index of antiphonal laughter for each dyad was derived using Yule's Q. Significantly more antiphonal laughter was produced in friend than in stranger dyads, and females in mixed-sex dyads produced more antiphonal laughter than did their male partners. Antiphonal laughter may therefore reflect a mutually positive stance between social partners, and function to reinforce shared positive affective experiences.
Article
locations of neural circuits which control separation distress vocalizations / summarize the organization of distress vocalization circuitry in the brains of guinea pigs and domestic chicks neurochemistry of vocalization control / opiate and non-opiate inhibition of DV [distress vocalization] circuitry / benzodiazepine influences on DVs / neurochemistries which facilitate separation distress / curariform activation of panic and flight / glutaminergic system / corticotropin releasing factor drug and brain lesion interactions (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Book
To the majority of biologists, the physiological control of mammalian vocalizations is only a small part of the large field of motor physiology. . . . Still, it is an autonomous subject embracing more than the motor control of the body and is, therefore, by far more complex. Anatomically, essential cerebral structures involved in the control of gross and fine movements of the mammalian body seem to participate in the control of the voice as well. . . . Except in man, the voice is independent of neocortical control. Animal vocalizations are species-typical and genetically programmed. . . . Vocalizations are social signals as well, and, thus, communication-directed motor activities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
Male and female rats emit ultrasonic vocalizations in reproductive encounters. While estrous bedding has been used to elicit vocalizations of males, the number of responses is variable. We report a reliable method to assess vocalizations using exposure to a stimulus animal. The stimulus rat is placed behind a wire barrier for 5 min, then removed. Vocalizations are then recorded for 5 min. Experiment 1 validated this method and it was used for subsequent experiments. In Experiment 2, male rats were castrated and tested for the restoration of vocalizations. In one group, males were allowed to copulate freely; in the other, females had vaginal masks to prevent ejaculation, but not mounting. Vocalizations were restored only in males allowed to ejaculate. In Experiment 3, we measured vocalizations in sexually nai;ve and sexually experienced males following exposure to either castrated (CAS) males, testosterone (T)-treated males, ovariectomized (OVX) females, or OVX females receiving estrogen plus progesterone (E+P). Males vocalized most after exposure to E+P females, whether they were sexually experienced or naive. However, the rate of vocalizations was significantly higher after exposure to E+P females when the males were sexually experienced. In Experiment 4, we measured vocalizations in females following exposure to CAS males, T-treated males, OVX females, or E+P females. Females vocalized most after exposure to T-treated males. Our results show that (1) sexual experience facilitates vocalizations in male rats, (2) vocalizations are highest after exposure to hormonally receptive conspecifics, and (3) ultrasonic signaling is a sensitive index for assessing the hormonal disposition of conspecifics.
Article
Laughter is an instinctive, contagious, stereotyped, unconsciously controlled, social play vocalization that is unusual in solitary settings. Laughter punctuates speech and is not typically humor related, speakers often laugh more often than their audience, and mate speakers are the best laugh getters. Laughter evolved from the labored breathing of physical play, with the characteristic "pant-pant" laugh, of chimpanzees and derivative "ha-ha" of humans signaling ("ritualizing") its rowdy origin. Laughter reveals that breath control is why humans cart speak and chimpanzees cannot. The evolution of bipedality in human ancestors freed the thorax of its support role in quadrupedal locomotion, a critical step in uncoupling breathing from running, providing humans with the flexible breath control necessary for speech and our characteristic laugh. Tickle, an ancient laughter stimulus, is a means of communication between preverbal infants and mothers, and between friends, family, and lovers. Because you cannot tickle yourself, tickle involves a neurological self/nonself discrimination, providing the mostprimitive social scenario.
Article
The development of clinically useful drugs to modify brain neuropeptide activities is yielding new therapeutic possibilities. Although psychiatric payoffs from the study of these systems remain modest, the potential remains vast. A conceptual shift in pre-clinical studies from mere behavioral analyses to deployment of affective constructs opens novel opportunities. Since affective feelings probably arise from the intrinsic properties of instinctual emotional systems in action, to understand the neurochemical details of such brain systems in humans may we advocate investment in ethological animal models. Neuropeptide controls revealed by such strategies provide opportunities to modify specific emotional and motivational processes at a level of precision inconceivable with traditional agents used in psychiatric practice.
Article
In these studies the incidence of conditioned and unconditioned 50-kHz ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) in young rats was measured in response to rewarding manual tickling by an experimenter. We found that isolate-housed animals vocalize much more then socially housed ones, and when their housing conditions are reversed, they gradually shift their vocalization tendencies. Isolate-housed animals also show quicker acquisition of instrumental tasks for tickling, and exhibit less avoidance of tickling as compared to socially housed Ss. Isolate-housed animals also show rapid acquisition of 50-kHz USVs to a conditioned stimulus that predicts tickle reward, while socially housed animals do not. We successfully bred for high and low vocalization rates in response to tickling within four generations. The high tickle line showed quicker acquisition of an instrumental task for, as well as less avoidance of, tickling as compared to the random and low tickle lines. They also played more. Lastly, we found that the glutamate antagonist MK-801 can reduce tickle-induced 50-kHz USVs, but is resistant to opioid, dopamine and cholinergic stimulant and blocking agents. Overall, these results suggest that tickle evoked 50-kHz USVs may be a useful behavioral marker of positive social affect in rats. Difficulties with such concepts are also discussed.
Article
In adolescent rats, 50-kHz vocalizations are most evident during tickling and rough-and-tumble play. The following experiments evaluated whether 50-kHz vocalizations reflect positive social affect by determining (1) if tickling is a rewarding event, (2) if social or isolate housing conditions differentially influence the response (since housing condition has been found to effect the reward magnitude of social encounters), and (3) if drugs that work on μ-opiate receptors, which has been hypothesized to control positive social affect, modulate tickling. Tickling was positively reinforcing as demonstrated by elevated operant behavior, conditioned place preference, and approach measures. A significant negative correlation between vocalization rate and approach latency measures was found. Social housing reduced tickle-induced vocalizations and approach speeds compared to isolate housing. Naloxone (1 mg/kg) increased vocalization in the socially housed rats and decreased it in isolated Subjects (Ss). These findings suggest that tickling can be used to induce positive social affect in rodents, and that it is modulated by endogenous opioids.
Article
PANKSEPP, J., T. VILBERG, N. J. BEAN, D. H. COY AND A. J. KASTIN. Reduction of distress vocalization in chicksby opiate-like peptides. BRAIN RES. BULL. 3(6) 663–667, 1978.—All the opiate-like peptides we tested (Met-enkephalin, (D-Ala2)-Met-enkaphalin-NH2, β-endorphin, (D-Ala2)-β-endorphin, (D-Ala2)-α-endorphin, (D-Ala2)-γ-endorphin) were capable of reducing distress vocalizations (DV's) in socially-isolated chicks when injected into the vicinity of the fourth ventricle in doses as low as 100 picomoles. All of these substances were at least as potent as equimolar doses of morphine sulfate. In general, DV's were a more sensitive measure of opiate-like peptide effects than reductions in body temperature. In a more limited study using peripheral injections, it was determined that (D-Ala2)-Met-enkephalin at doses of 400 nanomoles/kg, like morphine sulfate, was more effective in reducing DV's, than an equimolar dose of β-endorphin. β-endorphin was not as effective via a peripheral route as it was via central administration.
Article
We have proposed that short (<0.5 s), high-frequency (∼50 kHz) ultrasonic vocalizations (“50-kHz USVs”) index a positive affective state in adult rats, because they occur prior to rewarding social interactions (i.e., rough-and-tumble play, sex). To evaluate this hypothesis in the case of nonsocial stimuli, we examined whether rats would make increased 50-kHz USVs in places associated with the administration of rewarding pharmacological compounds [i.e., amphetamine (AMPH) and morphine (MORPH)]. In Experiment 1, rats made a greater percentage of 50-kHz USVs on the AMPH-paired side of a two-compartment chamber than on the vehicle-paired side, even after statistical correction for place preference. In Experiment 2, rats made a higher percentage of 50-kHz USVs on the MORPH-paired side than on the vehicle-paired side, despite nonsignificant place preference. These findings support the hypothesis that 50-kHz USVs mark a positive affective state in rats and introduce a novel and rapid marker of pharmacological reward.
Article
This article opens by noting that positive emotions do not fit existing models of emotions. Consequently, a new model is advanced to describe the form and function of a subset of positive emotions, including joy, interest, contentment, and love. This new model posits that these positive emotions serve to broaden an individual's momentary thought-action repertoire, which in turn has the effect of building that individual's physical, intellectual, and social resources. Empirical evidence to support this broaden-and-build model of positive emotions is reviewed, and implications for emotion regulation and health promotion are discussed.
Article
The authors provide initial documentation that juvenile rats emit short, high-frequency ultrasonic vocalizations (high USVs, approximately 55 kHz) during rough-and-tumble play. In an observational study, they further observe that these vocalizations both correlate with and predict appetitive components of the play behavioral repertoire. Additional experiments characterized eliciting conditions for high USVs. Without prior play exposure, rats separated by a screen vocalized less than playing rats, but after only 1 play session, separated rats vocalized more than playing rats. This findings suggested that high USVs were linked to a motivational state rather than specific play behaviors or general activity. Furthermore, individual rats vocalized more in a chamber associated with play than in a habituated control chamber. Finally, congruent and incongruent motivational manipulations modulated vocalization expression. Although play deprivation enhanced high USVs, an arousing but aversive stimulus (bright light) reduced them. Taken together, these findings suggest that high USVs may index an appetitive motivation to play in juvenile rats.
Article
Thesis (M.A.)--Bowling Green State University, 2000. Includes bibliographical references.
Article
The possibility that brain opiate systems participate in the control of social affect was assessed by determining capacity of low doses of exogenous opiates (0.125-0.50 mg/kg oxymorphone, and 0.10-0.50 mg/kg morphine sulfate) to reduce distress vocalizations of socially isolated puppies. Low doses of opiates were capable of profoundly reducing crying as well as the motor agitation they exhibit during brief periods of social isolation. Since reductions in crying could be obtained with morphine in the absence of any gross behavioral disturbances, the possibility is entertained that brain opiates may function to control the intensity of emotions arising from social separation. Possible parallels between the biological nature of narcotic addiction and the formation of social bonds are discussed.
Article
In 38 squirrel monkeys 251 vocalization-producing electrode positions were tested for their positive and negative reinforcing properties. Two groups of vocalization-producing brain areas could be distinguished: One group in which the electrically elicited vocalization was independent of the accompanying reinforcement effect, and a second group in which vocalization and reinforcement effect were correlated. The first group included the anterior cingulate gyrus, the adjacent supplementary motor area, gyrus rectus, ventromedial edge of the capsula interna, caudal periaqueductal gray and adjacent parabrachial region. The second group consited of the caudatum, septum, substantia innominata, amygdala, inferior thalamic peduncle, stria terminalis, midline thalamus, ventral and periventricular hypothalamus, substantia nigra, rostral periaqueductal gray, dorsolateral midbrain tegmentum and lateral medulla. It is hypothesized that the first group contains predominantly or exclusively "primary" vocalization substrates; the second group is thought to be composed mainly of structures whose stimulation yields vocalization secondarily due to stimulus induced motivational changes.
Article
A series of experiments was conducted to determine the extent to which somatosensory stimulation is necessary for the elaboration of juvenile play in rats. Anesthetization of the dorsal body surface of juvenile rats with xylocaine reduced the frequency of pinning, an indicator variable for play, by 35% to 70%, while motivation to play, as measured by dorsal contacts, an index of play solicitation, remained largely intact. These data suggest that dorsal body surface anesthetization impairs the ability of juvenile rats to perceive and/or respond to playful gestures. When untreated animals were paired with xylocaine-treated animals, the xylocaine-treated animals consistently pinned the untreated pups more than vice versa, further suggesting that somatosensation may be involved in the establishment and/or maintenance of play dominance relations. A preliminary examination assessing potential involvement of other modalities in the play of rats was also conducted, with the data suggesting a possible role for audition in the play of this species.