My goals will be threefold: (1) to provide a brief synopsis of emotional systems in the mammalian brain as detailed in Panksepp (1998a); (2) to introduce problems we face in trying to measure emotions directly from the signals of the brain as monitored through electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings, along with some discussion of the potential benefits of nonlinear approaches to analyzing such signals; and (3) to discuss the self-organizational aspects of emotional systems in ontogenetic development, and how we might go about measuring such processes behaviorally (largely in animal models). Finally, I will try to stitch these diverse themes together into a conceptual view of emotional development as it may epigenetically emerge within the living human brain/mind. The available data on all three of these issues is regrettably meager, leaving too much room for speculation.

My overall aim is to conceptualize how the neurodynamic changes within the brain create emotions, and how such changes modulate emotional development. By “neurodynamic” I mean those brain electrical and/ or chemical activities that reflect the coherent activities of functional ensembles of neurons. Here I will focus on the electrical activities of groups of neurons as measured using EEG approaches, since this is the only routine measure that can monitor human neuronal activities in real time.

An Overview of Brain Emotional Systems

Although we currently know little about the neurodynamics of emotional processes, we do know a great deal about the behavioral, neuroanatomical, and neurochemical aspects of many emotional systems of the mammalian brain.