Jaak Panksepp, a neuroscientist who studied the brain, behavior, and emotions, died this week, on April 18. Panksepp helped establish the idea that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. He also made incredibly important contributions to our understanding of emotions—our own, those of other animals, and evolutionary continuity between the two.
In the popular press, Panksepp was most famous for his rat tickling experiments that pretty much proved rats laugh when happy and having fun, just like humans do.
Panksepp started tickling rats after he noticed that they were making a high-pitched chirping sound just before they played. It seemed as if they were chirping in cheerful anticipation and Panksepp wondered if their chirping was the rat equivalent of laughing. So he approached his research team and said, “Let’s tickle some rats.” After years of research, Panksepp and his team amassed convincing evidence that when rats chirp, they are, in fact, laughing.
Here’s to Jaak Panksepp and all he did to deepen our understanding of emotions and to inspire us to use this understanding to become better people.
“People don’t have a monopoly on emotion. . . Rather, despair, joy and love are ancient, elemental responses that have helped all sorts of creatures survive and thrive in the natural world. . . I think the more we know about the emotions of other animals, the more we will understand our own emotions. . . the more we know about our animal emotions, which support the rest of our mental apparatus, the more ideas we will have about how to be better people. . . the more options we will have for being good to others and the world.” —Jaak Panksepp
(Watch Jaak’s TED talk here.)