Jaak Panksepp
Bernice Gilman Baily & Joseph Baily Endowed Chair in Animal Well-Being Science | 2006 – 2017
Dr. Jaak Panksepp is known worldwide as the father of “affective neuroscience,” a field of study that examines the neurobiological basis of emotions. His early work was performed at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, but in 2006 he moved to WSU to accept the Bernice and Joseph Baily Chair in Animal Well-Being in the College of Veterinary Medicine. He passed away in 2017 due to cancer.
Panksepp was a prolific researcher with more than 270 research publications and 12 books. His most famous of which are the seminal, Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions (1998) and his more recent book with co-author Lucy Bivens, The Archaeology of the Mind (2012).
Dr. Panksepp’s internationally recognized work focused on the nature of the basic emotional systems of the mammalian brain, with the most recent work devoted to analyzing the brain mechanisms that mediate separation distress and social bonding. His discovery of the nature of social joy by studying the psychobiological controls of juvenile playfulness and the accompanying laughter-type sounds has redefined many of the current models of animal emotion understanding. Dr. Panksepp’s later work was aimed at deepening and broadening our understanding of these systems biologically as well as exploring the consequences of this knowledge for understanding animal and human mental health issues.
Read more about Dr. Panksepp in the Spring 2013 issue of the Washington State Magazine, The Animal Mind Reader.