ABSTRACT
Sigmund Freud believed that feelings are always conscious and since the cortical ego was for him conscious, it therefore followed that the cortex was involved in the processing of emotion. To be fair to Freud, however, he always realised that there was something different about emotional feelings; they could be experienced spontaneously. Jaak Panksepp, the original mind behind the seven emotional action centres, spent much of his working life working with animals. But Panksepp and his colleagues noticed that many neurones in the brain reward system fired more vigorously in anticipation of a reward and quietened down when actually experiencing the pleasurable shock or the food. Whatever initiated the sense of loss, it is the effect on brain transmitter chemicals that results in the feelings of depression. Interestingly, modern research indicates that physical activity can “turn on” chemicals that have anti-depressant effects.
