Consciousness and feelings are topics that are best studied in humans. Research on the neural basis of feelings in humans is in its infancy (Panksepp, 1998; 2005; Damasio, 2003, Damasio et al., 2000, Ochsner et al.,

2002, Barrett et al., 2007, Rudrauf et al., 2009, Critchley et al., 2004 and Pollatos et al., 2007). We will never know what an animal feels. But if we can find neural correlates of conscious feelings in humans (and distinguish them from correlates of unconscious emotional computations in survival circuits), and show that similar correlates exists in homologous brain regions in animals, then some basis for speculating about animal feelings and their nature would exist. While such speculations Docetaxel price would be empirically based, they would nevertheless remain speculations. There are many topics that need further

exploration in the study of emotional phenomena in the brain. The following list is meant to point out a few of the many examples and is not meant to be exhaustive. 1. The circuits underlying defense in rodents is fairly well characterized and provides a good starting point for further advancement. An important first step is elucidation of the exact relation Dolutegravir supplier between innate and learned defense circuits. Paradigms should be devised that directly compare circuits that are activated by innate and learned cues of the same sensory modality and that elicit similar behavioral defense responses (freezing, escape, attack, etc). Comparisons should proceed in stepwise fashion within a species, with variation in the stimulus and response modalities (though mundane, systematic studies are important). The survival circuit concept provides a conceptualization of an important set of phenomena that are often studied under the rubric of emotion—those phenomena that reflect circuits and functions that are conserved across mammals. Included are circuits responsible isothipendyl for defense, energy/nutrition management, fluid

balance, thermoregulation, and procreation, among others. With this approach, key phenomena relevant to the topic of emotion can be accounted for without assuming that the phenomena in question are fundamentally the same or even similar to the phenomena people refer to when they use emotion words to characterize subjective emotional feelings (like feeling afraid, angry, or sad). This approach shifts the focus away from questions about whether emotions that humans consciously experience (feel) are also present in other mammals, and toward questions about the extent to which circuits and corresponding functions that are relevant to the field of emotion and that are present in other mammals are also present in humans.