Reflections on a footnote: implications for the study of emotions in animals

Abstract

<p>A footnote (FN) originally submitted as a comment to the article "Parsing Reward" led me to write this essay. The comment was rejected by the editor of a prestigious scientific journal in the area of behavioral neuroscience with the suggestion that it would be more appropriate for an "idle talk". I believe that the core issues involved are important to address explicitly in a debate within the broad domain of the frontiers of human and biological sciences. The protagonists involved in the didactic episode of the FN, whose articles and books I have been reading over the years, are leaders in the field of neuroscience. In this essay the episode is historically contextualized and discussed in terms of potential implications for ethology, psychology and neuroscience.</p>

Brincar na perspectiva psicoetológica: implicações para pesquisa e prática

“…I read the book "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions" with much interest, and used it in the "Motivação e Emoção" discipline, which César Ades and I taught for over 30 years on the undergraduate course in Psychology at the Institute of Psychology of University of São Paulo, since it is in line with the psychoethological approach that guides us. I remember my conversations with César (Otta, 2012(Otta, , 2015 about the research showing that rats 'laugh' -emitting 50-kHz ultrasonic vocalizations (<0,3 s) that the human ear cannot identify, but that can be recorded with equipment and submitted to sonographic analysis -in positive affective situations, such as play Burgdorf, Kroes, Moskal, Pfaus, Brudzynski, & Panksepp, 2008;Knutson, Burgdorf, & Panksepp, 1998;Brudzynski & Pniak, 2002), mating (Burgdorf et al, 2008), in response to abusive drugs -e.g., amphetamine - (Burgdorf, Knutson, Panksepp, & Ikemoto, 2001;Thompson, Leonard, & Brudzynski, 2006), and anticipation of rewards (Burgdorf, Knutson, & Panksepp, 2000). They also whine -emitting 22-kHz ultrasonic vocalizations (>0,3 s) -in negative affective situations, such as encounter with a predator (Blanchard, Blanchard, Agullana, & Weiss, 1991), defeat by a conspecific (Thomas, Takahashi, & Barfield, 1983), withdrawal of drugs such as alcohol, benzodiazepines, opiates, and psychostimulants (Covington & Miczek, 2003;Vivian et al, 1994), and anticipation of aversive stimulation (Choi & Brown, 2003;Lee, Choi, Brown, & Kim, 2001).…”

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“…O interesse sobre comportamento animal remonta ao início da própria história do homem como espécie (Ades, 2010). Inúmeros filósofos e naturalistas deram contribuições conceituais fundamentais ao longo do tempo, destacando-se o marco inaugural da área -em termos de estabelecer referenciais teóricos, além de descritivos -o memorável trabalho de Charles Darwin sobre a emoção em animais (Darwin, 1872), tema de estudo cujo interesse vem se renovando até os dias atuais (Ekman, 1992;Otta, 2015).…”

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“…O trabalho de Charles Darwin sobre a emoção em animais (Darwin, 1873) é considerado o marco inaugural da área da Etologia, tema de estudo cujo interesse vem se renovando até os presentes dias (Eckman, 2015;Otta, 2015).…”