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The Neuropsychology of the SEEKING System Neuropsychoanalysis, 2012, 14 (1) 5 An Evolutionary Framework to Understand Foraging, Wanting, and Desire: The Neuropsychology of the SEEKING System Jason S. Wright & Jaak Panksepp (Pullman, WA) The SEEKING system of mammalian brains needs to be understood from multiple scientifc and clinical perspectives. SEEKING theory provides new neuropsychoanalytic perspectives for understanding the human mind and its behavioral and emotional disorders and considers dimensions of experience that have traditionally been subsumed under concepts such as “drives” and “motivations.” Historically these concepts became problematic because experimentalists and clinicians didn’t quite know what they were speaking about, at least within the evolved dynamics of the mammalian BrainMind. Here, we briefy summarize the history of the feld and build a framework to help us understand a variety of human experiences, with the hope of understanding and treating common hu- man psychological problems—from a vast number of addictive urges to depressive despair. Our goal is to promote an understanding of a key form of human experience that resides in the nomothetic primary-process domain, which provides a fundamental substrate for the idiographic growth of individual minds toward both psychological disturbances and mental health. Concurrently, by consider- ing the impact of the SEEKING system in psychological, psychiatric, neuroscientifc, and psychoanalytic domains, we have sought to provide a clear vision of one key entry point for linking our animalian foundations to a better understanding of the higher aspects of human minds and the brain. Keywords: SEEKING; desire; drive; motivation; consciousness; wanting; craving; depression; addiction; neuropsychoanalysis A problem that continues to impede productive psy- source for the classical concept of global “motivation,” choneurological research is the lack of generally ac- but because this system mediates a remarkably ener- cepted conceptual frameworks through which both gized form of intracranial self-stimulation reward, for psychological and modern neuroscientifc perspectives six decades it has been misleadingly called “The Brain can be integrated, studied, and understood in a common Reward System.” This article highlights how a SEEK- language. In this article we combine theory, experi- ING view provides a more coherent understanding of mental fndings, and hypotheses to provide a synthesis how this emotional urge generates joie de vivre as well of neuroscientifc evidence and human subjective ex- as many psychiatrically relevant vicissitudes of exces- perience in order to understand the eager “desire” that sive motivational “drive.” characterizes so much of human and animal mental The generic “reward” terminology for self-stimu- life. A primal neural system devoted to the “energet- lation reward is psychologically ambiguous. It is cur- ic” seeking of resources across mammalian species is rently increasingly understood that this “rewarding foundational for this. This primary-process SEEKING system” does not generate sensory pleasure but, rather, system will be discussed, dissected, and synthesized as a psychomotor eagerness to obtain resources that can a foundational psychobehavioral phenomenon that has engender pleasure and also help avoid various forms historically gone under many names, from “drive” in of distress. A neuropsychoanalytic approach offers an the psychoanalytic literature to “incentive salience” in alternative and hopefully more accurate vision of how modern behavioral neuroscience. It is the major brain a primal SEEKING urge to engage with the world Jason S. Wright and Jaak Panksepp: Center for the Study of Animal Well-Being, Department of Veterinary & Comparative Anatomy, Pharmacology, and Physiology and Programs in Neuroscience, College of Veterinary Medicine, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, U.S.A. Correspondence to: Jaak Panksepp: Center for the Study of Animal Well-Being, Department of Veterinary & Comparative Anatomy, Pharmacology, and Physiology, College of Veterinary Medicine, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164–6520, U.S.A. (email: [email protected]). © 2012 The International Neuropsychoanalysis Society • http://www.neuropsa.org 6 Jason S. Wright & Jaak Panksepp in affective ways allows all mammals (and probably ignored or overinterpreted, leading to needless con- other vertebrates) to forage for and anticipate diverse troversies. Our goal in this article is to integrate the rewards and also to cope with various “punishing” horizontal and vertical perspectives. We break down states of the world. As we clarify here, the capitaliza- the extended SEEKING system itself into its three hor- tion of this large neural network is intended to provide izontal component-functions—namely, (1) generating a general nomenclature for “primary-process” brain (generation of naked anticipation/excitement), (2) cou- systems laid down in the brain as instinctual, ancestral pling (linking urges spatiotemporally to the objects and “memories” that all mammals need in order to survive opportunities of the world and to specifc drives in the (Panksepp, 1998, 2011a, 2011b). brain), and (3) enacting (e.g., where SEEKING transi- Such a conceptual shift can also facilitate new un- tions from appetitive to consummatory, or at higher derstanding of how basic emotional systems promote levels is accompanied by various thoughts or cognitive simple learning (secondary-process) as well as cog- perspectives). These horizontal component-functions nitively sophisticated agendas (tertiary-process) that are simultaneously viewed through an evolutionary refect how the “mind’s eye” can travel both backward vertical perspective—of primary, secondary, and ter- and forward, along past and future life-lines, in order tiary processes, refecting instinctual, learned, and cog- to concoct new aspirations, hopes, and plans for the nitive levels of analysis (for further discussion of such future, as well as to dream and learn. Ultimately the levels, see Panksepp’s review of Damasio’s Self Comes function of all primal affective processes is to better to Mind in the last issue of this journal; Panksepp, anticipate and cope with the future, each being molded 2011d). Such a framework intends to shrink the gap through evolution to refect the needs and best coping between psychological and neurological research and strategies of nature. But the SEEKING system stands thought and hopefully allows better integration of di- out from the others because of its vast purview—its verse points of view in this area (Panksepp & Moskal, participation in practically all goal-directed mental and 2008). A brief review of depression and addiction, as bodily activities. each relates to the SEEKING system, is also offered, Here the SEEKING system is discussed from both along with theoretical implications for future research psychological and neurological perspectives. Well- and clinical practice. Thus, this article ranges from known and widely used traditional concepts such as concrete neurobiological evidence to both practical “drives” and “motivation”—often used in diverse ways and philosophical perspectives/speculations. in different disciplines—will be integrated with the SEEKING system perspective. However, the way in which this system is analyzed is also a question of Historical and philosophical perspectives perspective. The majority of behavioral neuroscientists take a “horizontal approach”—that is, systems are ana- In his overview work, An Outline of Psycho-Analysis, lyzed as sensory inputs being integrated with behavior- Freud (1940) frames the abyss between psychological al action, which of course they are. The neural systems and neuroscientifc understanding: are then analyzed sequentially, as a function of an or- We know two kinds of things about what we call our ganism’s behavior over time, and are interpreted with psyche (or mental life): frstly, its bodily organ and little or no regard for the evolutionary organization of scene of action, the brain (or nervous system) and, on the brain. Our view is that this horizontal approach the other hand, our acts of consciousness, which are adds value, but also that the “vertical” perspective of immediate data and cannot be further explained by primary–secondary–tertiary processing that takes an any sort of description. Everything that lies between evolutionary perspective is also necessary to under- is unknown to us, and the data do not include any di- stand what, epistemologically, a specifc experiment rect relation between these two terminal points of our is studying. This is particularly important when study- knowledge. If it existed, it would at the most afford an ing emotional systems in nonhuman animals since, exact location of the processes of consciousness and without such a “vertical” perspective, it is diffcult to would give us no help towards understanding them. [pp. 144–145] know what aspects of the neural systems and resulting experiences/behaviors are translatable to the human The last point raised is one that may exist forever, at mind as well as what aspects of the human mind can be least to some degree. Despite how close we come to studied in other animals. understanding different aspects of the brain, even when Without a coherent evolutionary perspective, results tied empirically to psychological processes, this does of animal research might therefore either be wrongly not automatically illuminate the mechanisms by which The Neuropsychology of the SEEKING System
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