Animal emotions provide clues to autism, other disorders

Animals might not analyze their emotions the way humans do, but they do experience them, according to Jaak Panksepp.

Panksepp, a relatively new addition to WSU’s  Department of Veterinary and Comparative Anatomy, Pharmacology and Physiology, is a professor and holder of the Baily Endowed Chair of Animal Well-Being.

With his arrival, Panksepp has ushered in a new area of study called “affective neuroscience.” Born in Estonia, he brings with him a tremendous portfolio of both domestic and international neuroscience credentials.

He is already something of a celebrity, having been featured on MSNBC and in Psychology Today. In his most recent interviews, he explains that “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.”

In brief, affective neuroscience involves the study of the basic processes that create and control moods, feelings and attitudes … in both people and animals. 

“This doesn’t imply that animals think about their feelings like people do,” said Panksepp, “but they do experience them in similar ways.”

Panksepp’s research goal is to offer a scientific strategy for understanding emotional feelings in the brain by accurately studying the behavior of animals. 

“All animals have instinctual behaviors, so therefore we target the instinctual circuits,” he said. “We can stimulate a circuit — say by gently tickling a rat — to essentially ask the animal if he likes the circuit on or off (rats like it on).  They always choose one way or the other.  Mother Nature built it in such a way that a feeling component is part of the instinctual system.” 

Practically speaking, this understanding of animal behavior and the neurochemistry behind emotion may help lead to breakthrough treatments for an array of psychological disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, autism, sleep problems and more.

In the late 1970s and early 80s, Panksepp and his colleagues developed the first animal model for autism.  Later they tested autistic children in Salzburg using an opiate blocking drug called naltrexone. Given painstakingly calculated doses of naltrexone, Panksepp and his team found that some children became more cheerful and responsive.

By blocking the opioid system only at night, they effectively allowed the natural opioid system to become more active during the day.

“We are working with the body’s own chemistry in these studies,” he said, “so there are few side effects.  In general, the drug increases social desire and we speculate that some autistic children have a higher than normal opiate level in their brain, causing them to become socially aloof.  In effect, they become addicted to themselves.” 

Panksepp is also toying with the idea that low dose naltrexone might work for other disorders — such as depression — and may be something he plans to investigate in the future. But he warned that the drug is very complicated to use — in addition to affecting emotional states, naltrexone apparently modulates the immune system such that large doses have been implicated in tumor growth while very small doses seem to inhibit cancer.

With millions of questions yet to answer in this new frontier of affective neuroscience, Panksepp plans to continue his investigations at WSU as well as collaborate with other university researchers.  He is especially interested in the organization of the “social brain” and social emotions — joy and sadness.

But finding a species in which he could study both systems at once proved to be difficult.  Panksepp finally discovered the degu — a small, guinea pig-like rodent native to Chile. The playful degus have a wide repertoire of vocalizations which is the basis for many of Panksepp’s previous studies. 

He has found that some of the high-pitched chirps of rats can read like human laughter — the essence of social joy.  He also has shown that mammals are capable of fear, rage and separation distress as well as subtler emotions such as the “quest for nurturance and the desire to offer care” — as anyone who has ever owned and loved a dog could agree.