ABSTRACT
Modern technology has contributed signi®cantly to our knowledge of brain development and the importance of early affective experience. The advent of neuroimaging and computerized tomography (CCT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI, fMRI) and single photon/positron emission computed tomography (SPECT/PET) brain scanning technology has enabled researchers to track precisely what happens in the brain at various points of development and in a range of experimentally constructed settings. Animal studies have also been relevant, pointing to the primitive and survival-based nature of our existence (e.g. LeDoux, 1998; Panksepp, 1998). Affective neuroscience as a specialist ®eld has utilized these new technologies and has integrated ideas from an understanding of the brain and neurological functioning, contributions from developmental psychology, new perspectives on learning theory, unconscious realms of experiencing that are based in emotional processing in the primitive brain, and perspectives on implicit memory processes that together form a powerful argument for the need to take a perspective on human relational functioning that is not based in only one theoretical approach.
