La mente affettiva. Neuroetologia dell’emozione, dell’immaginazione e della coscienza

Starting from the observation of animal behavior, neuroethology investigates the brain bases of the instinctive tendencies that animate the human mind. Contrary to common opinion, instincts do not act as blind automatisms but as ‘vectors of awareness and intentionality’, activated in the deepest neuronal areas and which have a influence on the activity of the entire brain. The perspective based on Panksepp’s research sets the most evolved functions of the human mind within two neuropsychic levels: the affective proto-mind and the ideational mind. Mental health depends on the integrative capacity of the ideo-affective flow, which generates thoughts, images, and memories endowed with particular affective tones that are organized into personality complexes. This is a text of great interest in the field of clinical psychology, to which neuroscientific research offers increasingly advanced tools to better understand the nature and functioning of mental disorders and psychopathological symptoms.